ARC or Advance Reader Copy is something that I always wonder as to how and where fellow readers got it back when I was new in the reading community. Back then, I thought that ARCs are only for the influencers or popular people in the community. But later, I found out that ARCs can be requested to a website. You don’t need to be popular but you need to make sure that you will give a feedback to the books that you requested.
So basically, this is like a beginners guide to where you can request an ARC. I know there are other websites aside from the three that I am about to mention but these three is where I get my ARCs and I think they are easy to navigate.
Unlike the other two websites that I will mention, this is probably an underrated website to get an ARC. BookSirens is a website to go to if you want to read ARCs or received a free copy of a book in exchange for book reviews. However, most of the books here are from small publishers and Indie authors. So if you want to help out small publishers and indie authors, do check this out.
What I like about this website is the profile. When you sync your Goodreads account it would provide a statistic of what is your most read genre, number of books you reviewed and rated, etc.
The only downside of this website is you don’t get to search the book titles. Based on your reviewer ranking, they would provide a weekly list of pre-approved titles that you can review based on the genre that you like. But it is, in a way, a good way to explore books from your favorite genre and discover underrated books or authors that may soon be a favorite.
If you are looking for popular publishers and books, this is the website for you. This is one of the websites where the biggest and known publishers have ARCs up for request. You can check out the ARCs offered per publishers or search the title if you know what you want or just simply explore.
But there are two downside in this website for me. Emphasis on for me. To be honest, I found this website a bit hard to navigate. After using my top 1 for years then heading to this website, I was confused. Also, once you requested for a title, you cannot just download it or request for the ARC, you need to make a pitch as to why the publisher should grant you access. However, this is also an advantage because sometimes highly anticipated books are only granted to popular reviewers or higher ranking readers. But because of the pitch, even though you do not have a higher rank, the publisher could grant you the title just by your pitch.
NetGalley is for everyone. Like Edelweiss, you can find big and small publishers here. This is the website that is popular to book bloggers & bookstagrammers alike. It is easy to navigate and it has a nice interface. You can also acquire badges to put in your blog.
This is my go-to website whenever I want to read an ARC. Though most of the time, big publishers in this website would tend to decline your request when you have low feedback ratios. Plus, some would really look at your credentials and your bio. But there are titles that you don’t even need to request, you can just download it.
Just a friendly tip if you haven’t sign up to any of these website:
- Don’t be too excited to request a lot of titles and make sure to request titles that you would really read because 2 out of 3 of these websites would have a policy to review the book for 30 or 60 days depending on the title.
So that’s it for this blog. I hope this would be helpful to those who wanted to read an ARC but don’t know where to get them. If you want to check out the website, just click the image to be directed to the actual website.
Until next time!
Maria❤
A Daughter of Parchment and Paper 