Edelweiss is confusing.
I remember when I first started blogging, I opened an Edelweiss account, and immediately stopped using it because I didn’t know what the hell was going on there. But as time progressed, I realized that Edelweiss usually has more review copies I am interested in, so the only thing I could do is try to figure it out. And I did! Plus, Netgalley limited a lot of their copies for international readers and it’s really stupid, so I had to switch to Edelweiss. So I am here to impart the knowledge I acquired.
Also, a friendly reminder that there’s a GIVEAWAY going on on the blog.
Let’s get to a comprehensive guide to navigating Edelweiss!
When you open Edelweiss, you are confronted with this mess:
It’s kind of daunting. Never fear! We’re gonna break it down!
First things first – your profile
Once you start using Edelweiss for requesting, publishers are going to start looking at your profile. So you need to get it looking all nice and pretty. Your profile is located in the upper right corner of your dashboard:
Once you open up your profile there are two things to look at. I’ve labeled them all in the image below:
The big box is your stats – the same thing you put on your Netgalley profile. I use the same exact text on Edelweiss and on Netgalley. Basically, you should say where you blog, how you review stuff etc. and then proceed on giving stats for all of your profiles – followers, views, visitors, etc.
The smaller box is really important. Those are your profiles connected to the Edelweiss account. This affects your profile strength. And you need that profile strength to be excellent if you want to get approved. So click the little pencil next to the links section and you open up the following dialogue box:
As you can see, I’ve got my Goodreads, Twitter and of course blog links listed. That’s enough to get your profile to excellent strength. Once you’re done, just click the little floppy disk in the bottom right corner to save. And that’s your profile done!
Now the hard part – navigating the site!
The most important (dare I say the only important) tab for you on the site is the Review Copies one:
Once you navigate to it, you can see all of the review copies Edelweiss has available:
Now, you could just scroll through the copies, but that isn’t really time efficient. So you should look to the left side bar and there are a couple of things to consider there and I’ve labeled it different colors:
Review Copy Options
Let’s talk about the middle side bar first.
Available section
Available DRCs are all the digital review copies that are available.
To Download are review copies that you can download right away – no requests or approvals necessary. Sort of like the Read Now option on Netgalley.
To Request is the tab that shows you all the books that are currently up for request on Edelweiss. That is the section that you usually want if you just want to scroll through and see what’s available.
Requests You’ve Made
Now, this is the section where you can see all the books you requested.
Approved – these are all of the copies you request and you got approved for. When you navigate to it it looks like this:
As you can see, it lists all the books you have been approved for. Right now I have 9 books here, because Edelweiss deletes the ones that expire from here, so this section is always fairly clean.
Open – these are request you’ve made that are pending. Those are books that you still haven’t been approved or declined for. The one down side to Edelweiss (except the confusing interface) is that some books can get approved in ten minutes (literally) and some can sit here for months and months. These are mine:
Declined – these are naturally books you’ve been declined for. I only have 2 here, which is so much less than I have on Netgalley. My approved to decline ratio is much bigger here than on Netgalley.
Apply Saved Filter
Now if you remember, at the top of the side bar there’s an Apply Saved Filter section. This can help you narrow down the things you are looking for. This is how the tab looks like:
As you can see, I’ve got 5 saved filters. One are Fantasy books, one is Literary fiction, one is Middle Grade Fantasy, one is my favorite publishers, and the last one is YA. These are books that I usually search for. My most read genres, and a section on my favorite Publishers. Kind of like what you do on Netgalley.
You create the filters yourself, and there are a lot of options. Once you go to Add New Filter, this is what you see:
As you can see, there are multiple stuff to choose from. You can filter by genre (subject), publication date, imprint, publisher (Edelweiss vendor), age group etc.
Once you know what you want, you just click on it and save the filter. Say I want my filter to show me books on family and relationships:
Just click on it, give it a name and then click save. And now you have your brand new filter on the list:
And now you can apply your filter to all of the tabs that you see. For example, if we click on our new tutorial filter, it will show us all Family and Relationship books IN ANY TAB we navigate to. So for example, I apply my filter, and then I navigate to Copies to Request:
As you can see, you can now see which filter you applied in the corner there (it says tutorial) and since we are on the To Request page, it shows us that there are 14 books to request that are related to Family and Relationships. This can be very useful for navigating to stuff you want to see.
If you want to stop applying a filter, you just click on that tab and click Clear:
Refine Results
The last thing in the side bar is the Refine Results option. If you don’t want to use the filter, you can use these categories on the left to navigate to different things. For example, you can look up books that are not yet published, or look up things from a certain publisher:
You just click on the category you want, and Edelweiss shows you all the books in that particular category!
And now you know how to navigate the basic parts of the site!
Next up – Requesting Books
Say you stumbled upon a book you really want to request. How do you do it?
It’s pretty straight forward. Say I want to request The Wicked King by Holly Black:
As you can see, there’s a orange button on the right side, which you can click to request the book! Once you click it, you will see this:
As you can see, in the top right corner there’s the profile strength I was talking about. You want that to say good or excellent.
Below it, you can see your saved profile, with the stuff you put in at the beginning of this tutorial.
And in the bottom there’s a Why are you requesting this title? box. You can put what ever you want here, pour your heart out, beg, cry – whatever you think will work on the publisher to grant you a copy. You can also leave it blank, and it won’t matter much. But sometimes that can be important for getting a copy. I typically put stuff here only if I REALLY want a copy of a book, or it’s a release I am super excited about.
Then you click submit, and the request goes to the publisher while you (im)patiently wait for them to approve it (or decline it).
If you get approved…
If you have a review copy that is approved, you can then download it for your device:
Mine says downloaded because I’ve already downloaded this, but yours will be green and it will say DOWNLOAD on it. If you click that, this is what pops up:
If you’re using Kindle like I am, you can set the first box to Kindle, and in the bottom one you just type your Kindle email, and then the book is delivered to your computer in that format.
If you want to switch this, you can click the Change option in the first red box and you see this:
If you want, you can switch to the standard option, and you get a format that works on the rest of eReaders or your computer etc.
Reviewing a Book
If you’ve read your book and now you need to review it, you navigate to your Review Requests and then to the Approved section. Say I wanted to review What If It’s Us, this is what I would do:
You click the little speech bubble which says Rate and/or Review this Title and this window pops up:
This is your review window!
On the left you can set which things you want to rate. You can give an Overall rating, but you can add all of these other options and rate the book on them as well. For example, there’s Intellectual Depth, or Originality, which can be useful some times.
Below that, there’s a Themes bar. These are sort of like tags on Netgalley, meaning you add little tags that describe the book, and help publishers classify a book.
The blank box on the right is the Review box. Here you past your review, it’s that simple.
Finally, you can define where you Submit your review to. I usually just check the Publisher box.
Then you just click on the floppy disk again to save, and you’re done!
Once you’ve reviewed a book, it will look like this:
The speech bubble won’t be blank but it will instead show your overall rating of the book. It’s that easy. And the book will be moved from the Approved section, and you can instead see it in the Downloaded section, just below the Request section:
And that’s it!
That’s all you need to know to get started on Edelweiss! I really hope some of you found this helpful and that it will help you navigate Edelweiss better and not be put off by it! Let me know if you use Edelweiss and if you have any questions, ask away!
xxx
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Great information thank you! I have now FIXED my profile!💖
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Ah I am so glad you found it helpful!!! Thank youuu
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I’m extremely suspicious that you might actually be an angel sent on a holy mission to help book bloggers.
YOU ARE SO AMAZING OMGGG
this was so helpful. i’m literally going to use it as a guide today ❤
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AHHH YAY I AM SO HAPPY YOU FOUND IT HELPFUL 💜
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🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
I need to bookmark this post!!!
I hate that giving feedback is so long though 😂
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I legit wrote this because you were complaining about it on Twitter 😂 Hopefully you’ll find it helpful!
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If I complain about my life on Twitter, will you write a guide for that! 😆😂😂
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If you complain enough, I just might 😂
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Wow this is a very detailed post. Eldeweiss can be very confusing and I’ve never gotten approved for anything there even with an excellent profile. I’m going to keep trying though and one day the gods of Eldeweiss might have mercy on me 😂😂
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Ugh it sucks that that happens, I have no idea why! I’d say keep trying! 😊
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This is so helpful! Thanks! I haven’t even bothered with Edelweiss because it seemed so complicated, and I’ve been doing ok on NetGalley. I seem to get approved for most things even though I’m a pretty new blogger with hardly any followers. Part of why I’ve been avoiding Edelweiss is because I thought I had to list how many followers I had and that they’d be really concerned about that, but I haven’t done that for NetGalley and I’m not having any trouble. Anyway, I’ll fiddle with Edelweiss tonight. Thanks!
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I am so glad you found it helpful! It really does seem complicated at first, but you just have to fiddle around a bit, like you said! And you’re welcome, I am so glad people are finding this helpful!
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I just made my first request!
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Yay good luck!
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Wow, helpful post! It’s the third time I’m hearing of Edelweiss, and it was so confusing the first time I checked it out a few months ago, so I will definitely be referencing this in the future. I mean, I’ve also been a bit miffed by how Netgalley has been treating its international bloggers, so it’ll be nice to have a backup option if I ever wanted to transition.
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Yeah, I can’t request any books I actually want on Netgalley, so I had to transition to Edelweiss, and most of my ARCs are now on there! I hope this helps you in the future!
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Aw shucks, that’s a shame. REALLY don’t get why Netgalley does this, but I’m at least glad that there’s another way of getting arcs. Thank you! 😀
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Reblogged this on Susanlovesbooks and commented:
This is a great information post for anyone who has wanted to use Edelweiss. I was afraid of Edelweiss when I first signed up but this was post explains it all!😀
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Great guide, love! I thankfully have figured the site out pretty well after using it the last year, BUT my friends are CONSTANTLY asking me how to use the site, so I’m just going to bookmark this to share with them haha!
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So many people have come to me with the same question, so I figured I should just put it all into one post! Thank you so much! 💕
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Such an amazing guide! Thank you so much for this! 🙂
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Yay, thank you, glad you liked it!
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Great post! Bookmarked it for later. I’ve been wanting to dive into Edelweiss, but it feels overwhelming. I have no doubt your guide will help 😊 Thank you!
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Thank you so much and hopefully it will!
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Really thorough and comprehensive post!!
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Thanks!
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Omg. Thank you so much for this! I will def be using this to work on Edelweiss!
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Yay I am so glad!
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This was so helpful! I’ve never used Edelweiss before because it always looked so confusing so thank you for writing this post!
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Yay I am so so glad!
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Thank you! I had an account but didn’t really know how to use it, so this was incredibly helpful. I don’t think I’ll get many books though because I don’t have that many followers, but I’ll try anyways haha. A question, is there an archive date like there is in NetGalley?
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I am SO GLAD you found it helpful! There’s an archive date (books do get removed from your approved pages) but I don’t think it’s clearly stated anywhere what the date is
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Ok, thanks for answering! ❤
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Thank you so much for this post, this is so helpful! I don’t have an Edelweiss account because I heard it was super confusing, but you make it look really easy 🙂
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SO sorry I did not reply, your comment went to spam 😭 Thank you so much, I am really glad you found it helpful!
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That’s okay! 🙂 Quite a few regular comments end up in my spam too for some unknown reason haha
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Reblogged this on The Geeky Bibliophile and commented:
I have several blogger friends that find Edelweiss confusing, so I thought I’d reblog this EXCELLENT post that explains how to use Edelweiss.
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Reblogged this on A Bookaholic's Utopia and commented:
An excellent post. Perfect for new users.
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I just have to say it: You’re amazing!! 💕 I’ve been figuring out a few things with Edelweiss myself, but I didn’t quite understand it and kept having problems, so thank you so much for writing this really informative post! I will certainly bookmark it for future reference!
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YAY, I am so glad you liked it and found it helpful, Caro, thank you!
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What a wonderful post! Great job 🙂 me and Lucy also had an Edelweiss post a while ago, maybe in January. BTW, there’s one other thing about Edelweiss that not many people know – that you can switch regions and some review copies will change, depending on this (you are allowed to choose whatever region you want, so no limits – it’s the drop down at the top left).
I’m gonna share your post next time I am doing a regular Sunday update! 🙂 (so that would be in two weeks xD but I’m definitely sharing it!)
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Ah thank you so much, I am so glad you liked the post! Yes! I think there are even different languages, so there might be review copies in different languages there as well! Thank you so much again!
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Are you sure you are not an angel?
Cause OH MY GAWD, this was freaking detailed and so it was freaking amazing. I am immediately gonna work on it through this guide.
And hey I have some queries, I am completely new to this blogging thing so please help me.
Do they only send digital editions or we can get physical ones too?
I am neither from U.S nor U.K. Is it going to matter?
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Ah thank you so much, I am so glad it’s helpful for you! They only do digital copies. And it’s not gonna matter, I am also neither from the US or the UK 🙂
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Thank you ❤❤
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Thank you queen for this amazing tutorial!
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Haha you’re welcome! I am so glad you found it helpful!
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Thank you for such an informative post. I find Edelweiss so hard to navigate, mainly just searching for books. This is extremely helpful.
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Yay, I am so glad you found it helpful, and hopefully Edelweiss won’t be so hard to navigate anymore!
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u dont even know how helpful this has been THANK YOU SOO SOO MUCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Ah I am so glad people keep finding this post! I am beyond happy this was useful for you and you are more than welcome! 😊
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THANKS A MILLION! This was so helpful!!!!!
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You’re welcome, I am so glad you found it helpful!
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Thank you for all these tips and information! I have just started up my own blog and I am excited to be a blogger!
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Welcome to blogging, we are so pleased to have you here! And I am glad you found this to be helpful!
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thank you for this!
I just tried requesting a book and it says profile excellent but because I don’t have affiliation I can’t…how do i do this?
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Just put Edelweiss Community for your affiliation. If with that affiliation you cannot request a title, then it’s not available for request for you as a reviewer
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Ouh that’s a good one, thanks ! I saved in my “blogging help” tab 🙂
Apart of the international side, is tere really a big difference between Edelweiss and Netgalley? Or even BookSiren? so many websites for getting arcs, holy.. I do like how Edelweiss let you write *why* you want it though, I would’ve SO used it for Our year of maybe!
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No problem! xx
No, not a big difference, although they do have different books. And they have different reviewing options and they differ in such minor details, but they aren’t actually that different, no.
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Thank you so much! Your screenshots and explanations were so helpful! I just requested my first book.
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YAY this makes me so happy! I hope you have fun with Edelweiss and that you get awesome books!
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Thanks for this very helpful overview!
I have a question: Are you allowed to review the book on your personal blog and goodreads as well? And if you do, do you usually use the same text or do you write a different review for Edelweiss? Thanks 😀 And keep writing these super helpful tutorials.
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Glad you found it helpful! Yes of course, you can review it wherever you want. And I just copy the same text into the Edelweiss form! 😊
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