Digital Review Copy FAQs

Marketing and distributing digital review copies in Edelweiss allows you to directly promote titles to the largest community of book professionals (reviewers, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, and academics) – on a platform that they use for daily work, where purchase decisions are being made. You can also use Edelweiss to distribute review copies to non-Edelweiss users. It’s convenient, effective, and affordable.

Control access securely and in a manner that suits your publishing program and marketing goals best. For example, you can:

• Grant immediate download access to groups, like validated B&N and Books-A-Million staff or ABA members
• Whitelist or block individuals
• Make a ‘request’ button only available to certain groups, such as librarians or booksellers
• Share a title completely privately, with no requests allowed

You bet! Each of your review copy listings will have social share buttons to easily share on the social media platform of your choice.

Each week, new review copies are highlighted in the weekly newsletter that goes out to Edelweiss users, but there are several other options to consider when it comes to marketing your digital review copies. It all depends on your goals and your target audience for early distribution.

• Make the list available to all users in Edelweiss or whitelist certain groups like retailers, librarians, B&N, or ABA members.
• Feature the title in your catalog
• Share the listing on social media with a snazzy graphic (don’t forget bookish Twitter!)
• Have the author share the listing to his/her fans on social media or newsletter
• Advertise the title on Edelweiss or in the Edelweiss weekly newsletter
• Include a banner ad or link to the title in your own newsletters
• Use the Quick Send feature to send a download link directly to users in your Contact list or certain groups on Edelweiss
• Include in markups and comp listings for stores
• Encourage your sales reps to share with their contacts
• Advertise to your target audience in other forums (book blogs, associations, etc.)

The most effective yet often overlooked strategy here is to ask! When approving a digital review copy request, be sure to request that the reader write a review on Edelweiss after reading. Thank your reviewers to let them know that their time and effort was noticed and appreciated, and they’ll be more likely to write more reviews for you in the future!

Active titles are simply those currently available for readers to download. You can deactivate a title at any time.

You can keep a title active for as long as you want! However, most publishers choose to remove the option to download an advance copy when it reaches its publication date, and you can set it to do this automatically. Academic publishers may elect to keep titles active after publication date in order to promote the title for course adoption.

Yes, you can! With audio review copies, we can’t apply the typical DRM security to MPS files, so you don’t need to worry about those settings.

You will designate at least one person at your account as a DRC administrator, which will be designated as “DRC Administrator” under their user account privileges. A publisher can identify a single default email address for all DRCs available, or one default per sales division, imprint or group of imprints, or even a person (such as a publicist) associated with a title or group of titles. (Many publishers grant request management permissions to sales reps, publicists, and others without giving them full access to upload and activate files.)

On Edelweiss, you can control who has access to your digital review copies (DRCs), for how long, and on which devices. In general, Edelweiss DRCs cannot be transferred or emailed from one address to another. Publishers grant access to a specific email address, and that reader must log into their Edelweiss account using that same address in order to access that DRC.  Once they download the DRC in Adobe Digital Editions (ADE), it’s then only available to that authorized computer or device(s). The same email address must be used to link Edelweiss, ADE, and the e-reading device.

As an account administrator, you can edit your security settings on a title-by-title basis or across all titles:

• Length of time the DRC is available to be requested or made available for download.
• Whether the DRC can be shared (by the publisher) upon expiration.
• Length of time a DRC lasts once downloaded to a reader’s Adobe Digital Editions’ library. This can be adjusted so that your authors and internal publisher users can have longer access than a typical reader. (Not applicable to Kindle downloads)
• Number of times an individual can download the title
• Number and type of devices the DRC can be downloaded to a reader’s Adobe Digital Editions account. (Not applicable to Kindle downloads)
• Ability to create excerpts or print from Adobe Digital Editions
• Ability to be downloaded to Kindles. To increase security, Kindle downloads of Edelweiss DRCs can only be read on that individual’s Kindle – they cannot be shared with mobile devices or read on a computer using the Kindle for PC app.
• Ability to reject individual requests or block all of a specific users’ requests for your DRCs

Readers can easily enjoy digital review copies on a variety of devices. Frequent readers and reviewers are already pros at this. There are detailed instructions for readers in Edelweiss Help if needed, but here are the basics:

If they’re reading on a computer, they will download and install Adobe Digital Editions reader, and then they just need to authorize their computer with their Adobe ID. Once that is complete, they can download a review copy and it will open in the Adobe Digital Editions reader.

If they’re reading on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, they will first need to download the Bluefire app from the Apple app store. Next, they will authorize the app for Adobe Digital Editions by entering their Adobe ID. After that, they can download copies and it will open in the reader automatically.

If they choose to read on a Kindle, they need to go to their Kindle Setting in Amazon and add the Edelweiss kindle email address (kindle@abovethetreeline.com) as an approved emailer. The first time they download a review copy, they’ll change the setting to download to their Kindle (or to email if they prefer).

If they are reading on a Nook or another e-reader, they’ll just download the file to their computer using Adobe Digital Editions and then connect their nook to the computer to transfer the file.

You can either use FTP or you can upload titles directly within the Administration area of Edelweiss.

After you’ve received confirmation that your account has been setup and have received your FTP login credentials, you can post your first file(s) on our FTP server into your Edelweiss/DRCs subfolder or upload directly within the Administration area on Edelweiss. (If you use FTP, you’ll need to use a FTP client program such as the very easy to use and free FileZilla available at https://filezilla-project.org/ or an internet browser’s FTP plug-in to transfer your files to our server.)

Once you’ve uploaded the file, it will show as a pending file in Edelweiss until it has been completely processed on the Edelweiss platform (an hour or less!). If you do not subscribe to our Edelweiss catalog service, you’ll need to add relevant title information. Once complete, you’ll be all set to edit your default settings and distribute your review copies!

You and your team completely control who receives access to your digital review copies. You can grant access proactively (by granting access to certain groups or individuals) or reactively (by responding to requests). By default, no users outside of your publishing house can download your review copies without being granted access.

To proactively grant access, you can either send a download link to contacts or “whitelist” certain groups, individuals, or organizations. You can do this for one title at a time, or you can actually “whitelist” them for all of your review copies – now and in the future.

You can also allow users to request access to the review copy and handle requests as an Administrator. Users that have not been whitelisted for your titles will see a Request button in Edelweiss. When clicked, they’ll be asked to describe their role and reason for requesting the title. Those users with DRC Administrator privileges at your publishing house will receive an email and can also manage requests within Edelweiss.

Your digital review copies should be either a PDF or EPUB file, preferably less than 100 MB in size.

Name your file simply with the 13-digit ISBN (e.g. 9781234567890.pdf) of the primary physical book version of your title. Only name it with the ebook ISBN if that is the only edition available.

Tips:

• In general, we recommend using EPUB files, as they are more compact in size and tend to look better on a broader array of devices.
• Kindles often have problems with image/illustration intensive files, especially when they are over 10 MB.
• Adobe Digital Editions cannot (at this time) read JPEG2000 image files.
• We can also accept MP3 files for audio book files, but please bear in mind that DRM is not available for these.

No. The monthly fee includes unlimited downloads.

You can choose how long a title will be available on someone’s device (30, 60, 90 days…. or indefinitely). The clock starts for the reader at the time of download. (If a reviewer doesn’t have time to review the book during that time, they can download the title again to restart the clock – just as long as the title is still active on Edelweiss!)

Absolutely. One of the easiest ways to do this is with the Quick Send feature. This allows you to grant access AND send an email in one step. Just fill out the fields for the email content and click Email! Clicking on the link in the email will take the user directly to the review copy in Edelweiss. You can also use a direct link to review copy in your own email platform.

When an Edelweiss user requests one of your review copies, you’ll be able to see her company information and helpful Edelweiss activity statistics such as the number of requests she’s made, the number of review copies she’s been granted, and the number of publishers that have whitelisted her or added her to their Contacts list. Within the requester’s Edelweiss profile, you’ll learn what their role is within the book industry – including links to their blogs or past reviews. This information can help you decide if their early access to this title will help you achieve your marketing goals.

You can also easily “whitelist”individualss or groups to be pre-approved for your titles (key reviewers, customers, etc.).

All requests will be sent to at least one publisher email address for approval. A publisher can identify a single default email address for all DRCs available, or one default per sales division, imprint or group of imprints, or even a person (such as a publicist) associated with a title or group of titles. If appropriate, we can set up multiple “profiles” for sets of titles in Edelweiss to allow streamlined group administration within certain imprints.

The email will also be sent to any user (either within the whole company or in some cases only within a certain division) who also has that organization listed within their Edelweiss contacts. This usually means that sales reps who already work with particular accounts have the opportunity to approve requests. The other recipients of the request emails should be visible to you in the ‘To:’ line of the email. This also means that it is possible that someone else will have handled the request before you get to it. In this case, you will see the status as ‘approved’ or ‘rejected,’ instead of ‘submitted’ when you go to the Requests screen in Edelweiss.

Yes! You can set up default responses for use when approving, rejecting, and whitelisting requests. DRC Administrators can set up default text in the Admin>Import Settings area. One tip is to include a request for the reader to write a review in Edelweiss after reading the title!

We match the ISBN in the review copy filename to the metadata for the physical version provided to us via ONIX. If there is not an ONIX record, you’ll be able to add this information manually within the Administration digital review copy management features.

Yes! You can easily track and monitor your digital review copy activity.

Absolutely!