Hello, lovelies! I’m Marta and I’m back with a post for those who haven’t completed their Goodreads Challenge for this year yet. If you’re like me, you’re looking for some quick, maybe short (sometimes this backfires for me) reads that you can finish in those few days that remained. And I’ve got your back, I’m going to give ten suggestions and then show you a few books that I hope will help me on my challenge.
Without further ado, let’s get into the list!
Hello, everyone! Today I want to talk about an issue that has been on my mind for some days now, it’s something that I want to share my opinion on and while I did it on Twitter, I believe a blog post is required. I’m not sure if everyone is aware of the new policies of Goodreads and Netgalley, so I would try to explain what the issues are and why this is not okay.
It first started with Goodreads, who had decided to make a new giveaway program in January, where the giveaways are open only to US residents for an unknown period of time. They stated that their reason for doing this is “to bring our new Goodreads Giveaway program to more marketplaces.”, oh, the irony. They went even further and stated that authors and publishers outside US can organize giveaways, offering their books to US readers once again.
So, you’re not only shutting us down, you also have the audicity to suggest that International authors/publishers can take part in this, why? Why would they want to do this? If you don’t want to give international bloggers/readers a chance to promote the US books because you believe we can’t help in reaching more marketplaces, why do you think International authors/publishers would trust you with their books to bring them to the US marketplaces?
Then, they also stated there will be fees for authors. Before this, the author only had to pay for the shipping fee, now they would have to pay for some fee (150 – 600$) just because the giveaway is on the GR platform. I don’t know if I need to say that the authors are pretty angry about it and rightfully so when they can list their giveaways on other platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Rafflecopter for free!
After this blow, Netgalley made it impossible for international bloggers/readers to request books from bigger publishers (only wish for them) without even giving us a statement on the reason why those changes took place. Because we don’t have anything official on this matter, we can’t know, for sure, if it’s Netgalley or the publishers who limited the request option to US bloggers/readers. Nonetheless, this one hit me harder than the Goodreads one because it makes little to no sense.
I tweeted about this and my tweet got a lot of attention, which made me aware of the fact that the issue is huge and has to be addressed.
Now I’m going to talk about why your decisions hurt us, international bloggers, more than you think.
https://twitter.com/WordsWithLara/status/937022848643633152
4. There’s also the matter of diverse books. Unless a diverse book is very huge in US, there are 0 chances it will ever get published in other countries, especially in countries that are still ignorant to racism, homophobia, ableism and more. Diverse bloggers use Netgalley to get those, now you’ve limited their access to those too, so how should they ever read about things that are important to them? How do you get those books to reach the targeted audience? Lemme tell you. You don’t. Unless of course they move to US or something. It’s totally cool how we always say we support diverse authors and readers and how we want more diverse books, but at the end of the day, we do these things!
5. I want to thank all the authors who cared about this issue and who tried to get themselves informed, who supported the international bloggers and readers and tried to reassure them that they will find a way to make things better. You are the heroes.
https://twitter.com/heidiheilig/status/937005196164718592
6. To international bloggers, like me, I want to tell you that I know that the feeling of being left out without a valid reason hurts you. I know that you put up lots of time in your blogs and reviews every day and this is, by no means, the gratitude you deserve. I’m not going to say that the things will get better because I don’t know that. That is Goodreads, Netgalley and publishers’ place to say on whether we’ll be taken seriously any time soon.
I want to clarify some things, I don’t mean to insult US bloggers with this post, I love you all, I think you’re great, especially with the way you try to understand international bloggers. I also don’t think I’m entitled to ARCs, eARCs or giveaways, I think it’s just a hurtful decision to take those away without valid reasons and without caring who you hurt in the process.
Also, Laura @thebookcorps wrote a very detalied post on the same issue, so check her out, please!
Maja also wrote a post about it and you can find it here.
What are your thoughts on this issue? Did their decisions affect you?
The Cursed Books 