ARC - Advanced Read Copy

 

Writing Wednesday

Today it is time to talk about something most people probably had no clue authors are involved with, marketing. In today’s self-publishing world, marketing is 100% on the shoulders of the author. Some ignore it hoping their book will be seen. That is not a recipe for success.

Many steps can be taken, I am going to cover one of those today its called an ARC, Advanced Reader Copy. This is a marketing step an author can take to get copies of their book into the hands of readers and influencers before it is released. Influencers are those who have blogs, YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter accounts that primarily deal with books and book reviews.

The ARC is an excellent way for these people to read the book before release and brag it up for the author. This can be a video review, written review, and tweets. Authors will ask for people to do their ARC, and the goal is to have a mix of people with a large following as well as other authors.

One other goal of an ARC is to get reviews posted on Amazon on or as close to release day as possible. Review help sell books and also help those books increase their chance for visibility.

As a future published author, I have tried to become involved with the ARC process. Being new into the writing community, I am a total unknown. Being involved in social media is one of the easiest ways to get known, but even that limits your exposure. Doing ARCs for other authors is another way to gain this valuable exposure for not only myself but the author as well.

As the person doing the ARC, I do receive a copy of the book before it is published, and I am given a time frame to publish the ARC. Some authors will request the review be posted on certain outlets, while others will leave it up to the reviewer. I use all of my available outlets to publish my reviews, Goodreads, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and of course, Amazon.

Not only do new authors use ARCs, but all authors use them. An established author already has their name known, so their ARC is used more for generating press and hype for their books. Established authors need the hype as much as new authors.

The ARC is also the absolute final time the book will be read before it is published. There might be an issue that was missed by editors, proofreaders, and beta readers that is caught in the ARC. This will give the author time to fix that issue. Hopefully, that does not happen, but it can.

All of that takes time. Is it worth it? Yes, in the end, it is, not only for the author but for the reviewer, me. In the modern self-publishing landscape, exposure and hype are what drives us. In the future, I will be adding reviews here on my blog. Scheduling is a bear while keeping track of everything, but I am in this for the long haul.

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