Be Part of Pre-Publication Publicity

LibraryThing Early Reviewers

Back in October 2006, I first joined LibraryThing, a website that allows users to catalog their books, post reviews, etc. It's like a personal card catalog on the web. After entering 70 books into my library one rainy Saturday, I forgot about my account for over a year. I think I got tired of inputting all those ISBNs. Besides, I'm not much of a book keeper, and my personal library isn't all that great or extensive.

I recently got interested in LibraryThing again thanks to the Early Reviewers program. Users who sign up for the program get to select monthly from a list of available ARCs (advanced reading copies). Then, LT runs an algorithm to match the available ARCs with the early reviewers whose LT libraries suggest they're likely to be the most interested in a particular book. The publishers ship the books to the selected reviewers for free, and in exchange the readers post short reviews of the books on the LT site. This is a brilliant program, I think. The publishers get to create pre-publication buzz with very little investment and the readers get free books and the satisfaction of reading books before they're generally available.