One month post debut: ARC platform results
Heyo. I’m one month out since the release of my debut. In the ~6 weeks leading up to it, I tested out different ARC platforms, hoping to generate reviews. Here’s how it played out. This post has 0 affiliation with any of these entities, cross my heart! I was super grateful for posts like this when I was figuring it out not so long ago, so I'm doing the same. This is where I’m at as of today, though I still have a couple of reviews trickling in this week, so I might still get some more.
NetGalley, Victory Editing, one-month slot; $65
Requests: 170
Approvals: 124
Downloads: 110
Reviews: 39 so far
*The people at Victory were amazing. Super responsive, helpful, prompt, and even posted on their social about my book, which I didn’t expect. Just good vibes, encouraging people, which is nice in that stage when I was unsure of what I was doing. Not that I interacted with them a lot, but the 2-3 times I emailed them with questions and once to update my file, they were super responsive.
In terms of actual rating, I did, by far, the worst on NetGalley. Ended up with an overall average of 3.4. I did get a couple of good reviews, and by that I mean, ones where people really analyzed what I was doing in the novel, which was sort of abstract, allegorical, and covertly challenging expectations.
Takeaways: Be more discerning of reviewers. Initially, not knowing what to expect, and being quite cocky that my book was the next big thing (lol). I was approving 90% of requests that first week. But my first review was a 2-star, then 2 3-stars. Humbling. But as I started getting a range of reactions, including positive and negative, I actually kinda started to like both. Even in about half 1 and 2-stars, they'd say, "But you know what? I'd read this person's next book." lol
After my first few bad ones, I started vetting more rigorously. But by then, I already had well over half my total approvals out there in the ether, so all I could do was...you know, thoughts and prayers.
On my end, I realized from the feedback that even though my cover does match themes in my book, i could see how it might have been seen as an “alt, indie” romantasy—which it wasn’t. The cover was abstract, indie, artsy, and the biggest disconnect— "friendly." It wasn't. Anyone who went into it thinking it was a romantasy was straight ambushed with dark, demonic, deep-psyche karate chops in the form of extremely vulgar, explicit, and blasphemous smut that were metaphors for some unsettling and shadow psychology. This disconnect may have led to some of the lower reviews. Lesson learned? Idk, I usually need to learn the hard way a few times over. My second favorite review overall was also on NetGalley, a 4-star that just said “wtf."
BookSprout, 6-week campaign, $18
18 claims
14 reviews averaging 4.6 stars, 10 of which made it to Amazon. 2 DNFs: 1 with no review left, just a note saying “not for me.” And another with a 1-star that also made it to amazon as my 3rd review :(
Though they didn’t all post on Amazon, I noticed they had the highest likelihood to, which was nice because of course, you can’t post on Amazon ahead of release, and ran this campaign leading up to it. But a really good number of people who did review the book left them on Amazon.
I was pretty happy with my Booksprout experience—it’s part of how I identified the cover-expectation gap. The setup did let me test different covers by weekly campaign, and I had a few designs I liked, so I got to see how it did albeit on a very, very small sample size.
I tested cover that no one would ever think was romantasy, and found most people who claimed it with that cover reviewed well. (Both DNFs claimed it on a campaign using the same cover I did on NG).
I could have gotten 8 weeks for this price but I had to call it because of the KU thing.
BookSiren, 5-week campaign; $10:
10 claims
2 DNFs
5 reviews
4.5-star average.
These reviews tended to be the most in-depth. The $10 would have run for 3 months, but I had to end it early because of KU enrollment on the day of launch. I emailed them and asked them to end the campaign because I didn't want to gamble with the KU exclusivity. Obviously, I had a very small sample size, so....it just played out this way. But the 2 reviewers who DNF'd left a note that it wasn't their style but didn't post reviews, which I thought was considerate.
Pen Pinery, 5-week campaign:
15 claims
2 reviews
4-star average
So now, altogether, 1 month after release:
Goodreads: 45 reviews, 3.9 average
Amazon: 23 reviews, 4.1 average, and a 24th 5-star in the UK. I do sort of wish those 1 5-star reviews were reflected in my US Amazon page review count because it would push me up to 4.2, because I thought it was one of the more thoughtful written reviews that mentioned some of the things I was hoping to convey, but…well, c’est la vie.
Story graph: 7 reviews, 3.9 average
Reviews are still coming in but slowing down, though this week I had a little pop were 4 more came in (last week it was only 2). I suspect a few more will trickle in here and there, but I think the majority are in.
Honestly, though I’m not happy with my overall star ratings, I am happy with the platforms that helped me find ARC readers and I learned a lot.
I did have a very bad experience with one NG reviewer who, I was sooooo on the fence about approving (request came later after I started being more guarded). She left a 1 star, which okay, my book IS pretty out there and definitely not for everyone. I had a couple other 1 stars, one of which I actually kinda appreciated even though it was a little harsh and even mean spirited BUT, I could tell the person actually read the book and didn’t like it because of one of the more obscure, deep cut details they mentioned in their review that no one else had that was pretty deep into the book. So fair enough, she read it and hated it, which is her right, and honestly I’d actually still take that review over no review.
However one-star reviewer—I raised an eyebrow at. It’s my debut, and like many debut authors, I was refreshing my GR page quite a lot in those first maybe 3 days after release. So I actually saw this one come in. It was I think…my 17th review? I have no following, it’s a low activity GR page. But was struck me about it was that within MINUTES, this review had like 15 likes and weird ass comments of two people going “sorry this read sucked, hope your next one is better xoxo” to which the author, damn near instantly replying “thanks love.” In fact, one of these comments was actually dated earlier than the review itself, which seemed odd. How can you comment on a non existent review? This thing was posted with like a dozen likes out the gate. For comparison, my next highest engagement review had about 6 likes—and had been posted about 2 weeks earlier. So this review generated that many likes that quickly seemed…strange to me.
And of course, to this day, weeks later, it’s still my highest engagement review, sitting right that the top of all the others, with the likes it generated within minutes of being posted still towering over my next highest engagement review. I looked into this person and…idk. Suspish. And they had some followers, many with the same animation style avatar, something like the “Bratz dolls” style animation but a little more detailed and softer focus of it. History shows them all immediately commenting on each other’s reviews like ”thanks babe.” Also her “review” was extremely generic. Not a single actual detail of the book. Anyways, maybe it’s legit. I wouldn’t flag it for being a one star—it’s the “engagement velocity” I raised an eyebrow at.
Hope that helps!