Wednesday, January 28, 2009

NetGalley Update

Since Firebrand took over operations of NetGalley back in December, we've been very busy coming up the learning curve about what the product can do, and can't do, and how it should or could overlap with other Firebrand offerings.

What we have found is that the concept of NetGalley is very exciting and compelling. We have also found that product (like all products and services) is still missing some features that it needs to be the breakthrough product that we all know it can be.

This week we did an informal survey of registered readers about their recent experiences and some common themes were expressed.

In general:
  • All of the responders are very interested in the concept of NetGalley
  • Most found the system to be fairly easy to use, but...
  • We need Better Search tools – searching by genre, pub date
  • We need More Books!
  • We need to facilitate reading galleys Offline—ability to download to reading devices
  • We need to insure that Requests are followed up on by Publishers, and need for more acknowledgement that requests have been received

We are now on a monthly release schedule for NetGalley, and promise to continue to work on all of these issues in the coming months.

If you are interested in checking us out, please see the website and register!