The arc of the ARC

ARC’s (Advanced Reader Copies) appear to be the poor stepchild of the book promotion family when it comes to self-publishing. I assume traditional  publishers have worked out relationships for themselves when it comes to ARCs, but for us self-promoting authors, we have no kith or kin. That is to say, we are on our own.

What would work nicely is if Amazon would have a holding space for pre-launch reviews (of any product) that would appear at the release. They have no such service. A book cannot be reviewed until it is published. Why Amazon is oblivious to such a common practice as ARCs, I cannot guess.

The workaround is to send ACR copies to your “street team,” as your supporters are called. On the day you publish your book, you have your street team review the book on Amazon. In order to review, they must have bought the book (called by Amazon a Verified Purchase) or have spent fifty dollars on Amazon in the past year. The reviews need to be honest and not from family and friends. Therefore, the reviewer should not sound too familiar/friendly with the author. “Over coffee and tea, I argued this point with Charles,” is the death knell for an Amazon review.

Anyone want to be on my street team? Seriously, let me know. (cjkiernan01@gmail.com)

Beyond the street team, there are ARC services. I found a recommended list of sites at MW Editing. They range from free to expensive, and each is set up differently. If you are interested, you will need to explore them for yourself. I will not prejudice you, but I will tell you which ones I intend to use for my purposes.

BookSiren looks good to me. For ten dollars, I can get started, plus there is a ninety-day free trial. Reviews are not guaranteed, but they claim 75% of their readers who download a book post a review. You get charged two dollars for every download, but you can cap your budget. The reviews will be where the reviewers post them. The same Amazon problem still applies, as with all the other sites below.

The Indie View grabs my attention. It’s free and not so much a service as a monitored listing of over ninety independent book review sites. You would need to apply to each one separately. I intend to explore that list.

Similarly, there is a community inside of Goodreads called Making Connections where you can request reviews from other members. It is free; I am already a Goodreads member, so I plan to try this.

Not listed by MW Editing is Reedsy. I will focus on the Discovery program. It costs fifty dollars to submit an ARC. Again, reviews are not guaranteed. My experience with them has been good. I have blogged about that process before in January. Their reviewers are vetted, so the quality of the  reviews is high. I used the one I got for A Vacant Throne as an editorial review on Amazon as opposed to the reader reviews. I will try them again.

They also have a list of book review bloggers. This is a list of over two hundred bloggers, which can be filtered by category, like children’s or horror. Another list for me to explore.

These are my suggestions for approaching ARCs. Now I must put my nose to the grindstone and do what I said I’d do above.

For more detailed information about  ARCs, here is an article from Ingram/Spark. Also, consider using Calibre to create your own ARC. (Free)