Humor will not be tolerated!! -Portia

Has anyone ever tried out this "Booksneeze" website before? The idea of getting free books in exchange for a review sounds appealing (especially as a future school teacher), but I'm worried that the things they send out might just be trashy stuff. (Also, from just browsing the list, it sounds like they mostly do religious publishing, and here in Utah I already have access to that.) Are there other ways you know of to get free books by reviewing them, perhaps with reputable/well-known publishers?

wryness wrote:Are there other ways you know of to get free books by reviewing them, perhaps with reputable/well-known publishers?

I've gotten 4 ARCs this year through LibraryThing (1 unbound proof, 1 paperback proof, and 2 nice hardback finished editions). It takes a lot of frontloading to get books through them, though, because they pick the recipients of the ARCs through an algorithm that matches up the books they're offering with similar books that you already have in your LibraryThing catalog, which means that you've got to enter a decent amount of the books you own or have read into LibraryThing. Amazon has an ARC program and I think GoodReads might, but I've heard better things about LT's program in terms of the winners being picked more fairly.

NetGalley is a good one (https://www.netgalley.com/home/tour) Some publishing companies will only approve certain people for their books, though. But I think teachers and librarians have the easiest time getting approved. I've gotten several ARCs from NetGalley. I like it quite a bit.

There's also Edelweiss (http://www.abovethetreeline.com/edelweiss/) which is a similar program with different publishing companies. I've never tried them so I don't know how difficult it is to get approved.

Some day I'll learn to hyperlink. But today is not that day.

What getting free books for reviews is a thing? Why did no one tell me?

oh, yeah, I've won some books on goodreads for this (like 2-3)? They weren't very good. If you're a good writer, it's not really worth it. You can get paid to write reviews AND get a free book.