Every book marketing agency knows the problem.
You have a strong title. A well-positioned author. A launch window approaching fast. What you need is readers: not followers, not email addresses, but people who will actually open the book, read it to the end, and leave an honest review that influences other buyers.
That reader has always been the hardest thing to find at scale. And the current tools for finding them have a fundamental flaw that most agencies have learned to work around but never actually solved.
The Real Problem Is Completion Rate, Not Access
Most book marketing agencies have access to readers. NetGalley moves thousands of ARCs every month. BookSirens distributes to large mailing lists. Email campaigns to reading communities reach genuinely interested people.
The problem is what happens after the download.
Industry estimates suggest that fewer than one in three readers who download a free ARC ever leave a review. The book gets claimed, placed in a to-read folder, and, for the majority of takers, never opened. For a debut author with a tight launch budget and a specific review target, that gap between claimed copies and posted reviews is where campaigns quietly fail.
The readers who do finish and review are worth everything. They read the full book. They formed an actual opinion. They write reviews with specific observations that genuinely influence other buyers. A single review from a reader who engaged fully is worth more algorithmically and commercially than five reviews from readers who skimmed.
Finding more of those readers, reliably and repeatedly, is the entire job. Most agencies handle this by casting wide and accepting low conversion as a fact of life.
ReadOma offers a different model.
Why ReadOma Readers Convert Differently
ReadOma is an immersive reading platform. Readers do not download books out of passive curiosity. They open them inside a focused reading environment and work through them in active sessions.
The app tracks real engagement. Words read. Sessions completed. Progress through the book. Pace over time. A reader on ReadOma is a reader who is reading, not a reader who claimed a file and forgot about it.
This changes the profile of every person in the network. ReadOma users have actively chosen a tool that makes them better readers. They use features like the guided reading mode and WPM control because they are trying to read more and retain more. When an agency brings a new title to this audience, they are putting it in front of people with an established reading habit, not passive interest.
The downstream effect is a completion rate and review rate that is meaningfully higher than on traditional ARC platforms. Not because ReadOma readers are more motivated in the abstract, but because the reading environment removes the friction that kills completion. There is no distracting feed to scroll to. No notification to interrupt a session. The reader opens a book and reads it.
What a ReadOma Campaign Looks Like for Agencies
The workflow is straightforward enough to run in parallel with other campaign activity.
Reader matching based on actual behaviour. ReadOma's reader profiles reflect real reading history: genre preferences built from completed books, pacing data, session patterns. When an agency uploads a title, it is matched to readers whose history shows they finish and review books in that category. This is not a self-reported interest checkbox. It is demonstrated reading behaviour.
The book lives in the app. Readers do not receive an email attachment or a download link. The book is available inside ReadOma. They open it, read it in their normal reading sessions, and close it. No lost files. No "I downloaded it but cannot find it" situations. The friction that kills ARC completion rates elsewhere is removed by design.
Verified reading before review. ReadOma confirms that readers reached the end of the book before they can submit a review. This one step changes the quality of everything downstream. Reviews written by readers who finished the book are specific, substantive, and credible. They reference actual scenes, quote actual passages, and contain the kind of detail that tells a potential buyer something real.
Engagement data during the campaign. Agencies receive reporting on how readers are progressing through the book: not just binary finished/not-finished, but where readers are at any point in the campaign, where they tend to stop if they stop, and how long their sessions run. This data has direct value beyond the review campaign: it tells you whether the opening chapters are landing with the target audience, whether pacing works at the genre level, and where the book might need positioning adjustments for the next title in a series.
The Difference This Makes for Author Campaigns
For an author launching a debut novel or a series continuation, the quality of pre-launch reviews is often more important than the quantity.
A page of 30 detailed, specific reviews from readers who clearly engaged with the book builds trust with new buyers in a way that 100 thin five-stars cannot. Readers who are deciding whether to purchase can tell the difference. So can Amazon's algorithm, which treats verified-purchase reviews and reviews with substantive content differently from short, generic praise.
ReadOma's verification layer is what makes its reviews credible. The authors who work with the platform consistently report that the feedback quality from ReadOma readers outperforms feedback from bulk ARC distribution: not because the readers are selected differently, but because the reading environment produces different engagement.
Building Something That Persists Beyond One Launch
The most valuable outcome of a ReadOma campaign is not the first book's reviews. It is what those readers become.
A reader who finished an author's first book on ReadOma is now on record as having engaged with that author's style, completed a full book, and formed a genuine opinion. When the second book comes out, that reader is a warm audience, not a cold prospect who downloaded a file 18 months ago and may or may not remember the author's name.
Over two or three campaigns, an agency builds something that no distribution platform owns: a pool of verified readers who have demonstrated, through completed books and reviews, that they are the right audience for that author's work. This persists across titles and builds genuine author career momentum, not just one-launch spikes.
How to Get Started with ReadOma as an Agency
The first step is uploading a title and defining the reader profile you are targeting: primary genre, relevant sub-genre, comparable titles, and any specific audience signals that matter for the campaign.
ReadOma handles the reader matching, the reading environment, and the review prompting. The agency handles the author relationship and the broader campaign strategy.
The readers are already in the platform, reading right now. The question is whether the next book they open is one of yours.
Frequently Asked Questions
What makes ReadOma different from NetGalley for book marketing agencies? NetGalley is a discovery platform where readers browse and claim free books. ReadOma is a reading platform where readers finish books. The key difference is completion rate: ReadOma readers read books in an active, focused environment that removes the friction that kills completion on download-based platforms. The review rate from readers who complete a book in ReadOma is significantly higher than from readers who download a file from NetGalley.
How many reviews can a typical ReadOma campaign generate for a new title? This depends on the campaign size and genre, but agencies running targeted campaigns of 50 to 100 matched readers typically see 60 to 75 percent completion rates and review rates proportional to completion. For a 50-reader campaign, that typically means 25 to 40 verified reviews posted to Amazon or Goodreads.
Can ReadOma target readers by sub-genre, not just main genre? Yes. Reader profiles in ReadOma are built from actual reading history and reflect specific sub-genre preferences. A campaign for a dark romance can target readers who have completed similar titles, not just readers who selected "romance" as a general preference.
How long does a typical ReadOma ARC campaign run? Most agency campaigns run for three to four weeks, with the review window closing around launch day. This is long enough for engaged readers to complete most book lengths and short enough to align with launch timing.
Does ReadOma work for non-fiction as well as fiction? Yes. ReadOma has active reader communities for self-help, business, biography, and narrative non-fiction. The verification and matching system works the same way regardless of category.
To discuss a ReadOma campaign for an upcoming title, contact the team at contact@readoma.com or reach us on Twitter @ReadsbyReadoma.
