thoughtful1. ARCs have a purpose. ARCs exist for one reason, and for one reason only: To drum up advance publicity for books. They're sent to reviewers. They're sent to people who might be able to provide cover blurbs, either for the book in question or for the sequel. They're sent to authors for distribution to bloggers, people who win contests, and their moms. Note that the purpose of ARCs is not "to become collectibles" or "to be sold to people who just can't wait for the next one." This is why people are somewhat protective of them, and why their numbers decrease with each volume in a series. By book eight, odds are good that people are already as excited as they're going to get.
2. Authors are not being bad people when they refuse to give you an ARC. My friend Anton just put out a new book, Dead Matter. He did not give me an ARC, even though I love the series. Why? Because he had a limited number, and he knew that I'd both buy and talk about the book anyway. To put things, briefly, in totally mercinary terms, he had nothing to gain by spending a very limited resource on someone whose goodwill he already had. When I have infinite cake, it's cake for everybody, but when I only have three slices...
3. Yes, authors get upset when people sell ARCs. As stated up in item one, the point of the ARC is to get early reviews, early buzz, and early attention. It is not, sadly, to pay for cat food. Not for my cats, not for my publisher's cats, and not for anybody else's cats. They represent money spent, not money made. Someone who buys an ARC and doesn't buy the real book is taking money away from the publisher, and hence, money away from the author. More, if the ARCs are sold unreviewed, they didn't even accomplish their purpose before they were cast out into the cold, lost forever. Poor ARCs.
(As a footnote, and this is getting a little personal, but there you go: If I send someone an ARC, and then that ARC appears on eBay without a review having appeared first, that person is so never getting another ARC from me. Casting ARCs into the cold makes me sad.)
4. Once the book is out, concern and compassion for the ARC goes way, way down. Mia makes jewelry from my ARCs. Other people do other interesting things with ARCs. Some of them are awesome. Some of them are confusing. One way or the other, I don't care, because again, once the book is out, the ARC loses most of its mystery. I'd still rather not see them flooding the resale market, but there aren't enough of them to make a huge difference...once the book is out.
5. ARCs are delicate. Part of why I get annoyed when I see people selling ARCs for large amounts of money is that ARCs are fragile. I have one ARC of Rosemary and Rue that got turned into a continuity reference after Alice sort of chewed on it a little, and it's basically dissolving after fewer than four reads. So they make great collectables, and great review copies, but as things to keep? Well, only if you like to do your reading in loose-leaf form...
Thinking is hard. Let's have strawberry ice cream.
March 5 2010, 21:28:23 UTC 7 years ago
Now while I never sold yet-to-be-published ARCs, I did generally donate a box of ARCs a year to a charity auction at my local SF convention (specifically, the Sue Petrey Fund auction at OryCon, which benefits a fund providing scholarships to Clarion and Clarion West. This is the one case where I would count it more or less socially acceptable to sell an ARC prior to or on the heels of a book's publication date. In a handful of cases involving local authors -- or those visiting for author events -- either I or the Petrey Fund folks would try to arrange for the author to sign the ARC.
I should add here that I was almost always seeing ARCs from publishers rather than authors, and that just about everything I got was coming in at the publisher's initiative (that is, I almost never found myself asking for particular titles). In the rare cases where I did ask someone for an ARC, I did so with the specific commitment that I'd at least read it for review...and I don't now recall any situation where I asked for something and then didn't go on to review the book.
March 9 2010, 17:53:54 UTC 7 years ago