A Blogger’s Guide to Navigating Edelweiss

If you’ve been blogging for a couple of months, you probably know the existence of sites like Netgalley and Edelweiss that offer eARCs for review. Today I’m going to be taking a simple tour of Edelweiss and the basic need-to-know for navigating the site and getting what most of us bloggers want: eARCs!

Many people are usually confused on what’s going on in Edelweiss, and it’s because SO many things are happening! Booksellers use this site too, and I’m pretty sure I haven’t discovered even half its functions yet. It all adds up to spending a little time to discover the different aspects of the site.

This tutorial will be split into a couple of sections to make things easier.

---

Finding Review Copies

After making an account, the home page should more or less be like

Like I said, lots of things are going on from the start. I never bother with catalogs and leave them to the people working in the bookselling industry. Instead, I automatically head over to the tab labeled “Review Copies.”

Here are the book that you can request from publishers! They give pretty much all the information you need for the book, and you can click on the title for the ones you’re interested in.

These books seem interesting, but I’m looking for the Young Adult section. After all, I mostly read and review Young Adult books. Simply filter your search under the “Refine By” tab. You can do it based on publisher, age, subject, and all that smooth jazz. Usually I go directly to the Young Adult category.

Oh yeah! That’s what I’m looking for.

Now that we’re here, we get to scroll through all the young adult books. To get more information on a title, you just have to click on the title. Don’t click on the picture, because it’ll just end up enlarging the cover. Which has happened to me one too many times.

So we’re on the book’s page! There’s a whole bunch of information here but I stick to the basics: summary under book details, author bio beneath that, and sometimes marketing campaigns listed to the side.

But we’re looking at the TOP RIGHT BUTTON. Yup, the one labeled “Request Digital RC.” Because if you haven’t figured it out, we will be pressing that for requests.

Say you aren’t interested in this book anymore though, so you go back a page to the search results and keep scrolling…

And scrolling…

And BAM there’s an eARC you really want!

There’s a familiar blue button to the upper right of the book info section that you can click to request it! No need to go through the hassle of clicking on the title and going to the info page. Maximum efficiency right here, folks.

---

ARC Requests

Navigating is only half the battle, though. Like Netgalley, Edelweiss makes you write a description about your blog and all that fun stuff. If you have a Netgalley account and are pretty proud of how you write your bio, copy and paste should just do the job!

Anya from On Starships and Dragonwings has a pretty swell post on how to write your blog description, which I highly recommend you check out! When I first started blogging though, I never thought to use more resources. I pretty much wrote only two sentences, which consisted of:

“My name is Aila and I blog at https://onewayoranauthor.wordpress.com, where we review YA books. The site has 300 unique visitors per month and I review each ARC I receive to the best of my abilities.”

Surprisingly enough, I was still accepted by Harper Collins and a couple of other publishers! Since then, I’ve added a few sentences but I still keep it simple. (Especially since my blog stats are nothing to brag about.)

Don’t get discouraged if you get denied! Sometimes they’ll only put books on Edelweiss just for booksellers, and there are so many factors that publishers can take into consideration: previous reviews you’ve posted, how quick you requested the book, the current moon cycle, etc. (Not sure about the moon cycle one but who knows.)

For the additional message, I really don’t recommend the one I typed up in that screenshot. 😉 To maybe help your chances of getting accepted, you can talk about how much you want to read the book or if you’ve read other books in the series if it’s in one. Again, I’m not sure how these factors play into publishers accepting your request, but it’s always good to be safe than sorry.

Once you enter Submit, you pretty much hold your breath until you get accepted. Unless the publisher really likes you and auto-approves you- in that case, I am very jealous and in awe of your prowess.

The great thing about the description is that rather than copying/pasting it every time you request a book, Edelweiss saves it so you can use it again for the next book.

---

After Getting Accepted

After that tumultuous journey, you may get an email in the near future saying you’ve been accepted or denied! (Hopefully the former) If denied, then you always resend your request… But I’d advise to use that option sparringly.

When I get a mass acceptance, I just go back to the Edelweiss home page and through the tabs Review Copies >> Requests to check out the books I’ve requested.

The color coding is pretty simple. Blue for unknown, green for YAY, red for NAY. From here you can click on the title and download to your heart’s content!

DRC files can be read with Adobe Digital Editions on PCs or Macs, and Bluefire Reader on smartphones. Additionally, Edelweiss can send it to your Kindle email, which you can read via Kindle app. A little side note that the address kindle@abovethetreeline.com must be added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List on Amazon to do so.

Finally, don’t forget to post a review of the book to send to the publisher after reading! You can also go on the Search button and find some old books to publish reviews on- who knows, maybe it’ll up the chance of you getting accepted!

Would also not advise writing the kind of review I did haha.

Once you’re done writing the review, or copy/pasta-ing it from your blog, hit “Submit to Publisher” and “Save” and be proud of yourself.

You have made it through the labyrinth of Edelweiss.

---

This post was fairly, fairly simple and pretty much shows the minimum requirement you need to know about requesting eARCs on Edelweiss. The best way to learn, however, is to go to the site and spend 10-20 minutes clicking on things and seeing where they lead.

Like I said before, a lot of stuff I clicked on seem like filler content I would never use, so I just ignore those and skip to the steps above.

Thanks so much guys for sticking with me, and good luck requesting! ❤