Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire

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Noah's ARC: A Merchandizing Adventure.

Until I went into publishing (which makes it sound so studied and intentional—"went into publishing," instead of "wrote a book and somehow got the damn thing published"), when I heard the word "ARC," I was likely to start singing that old camp song about Noah and the Arc. God said to Noah, there's gonna be a flood-y, flood-y...

But anyway.

In the world of publishing, the ARC is not King. The ARC is sort of like the King's herald, the one who goes beating at the doors of every noble in the land to announce that way-hey, there's a ball coming up, and every marriageable girl in the Kingdom is invited. When the ARC arrives, all the local lords assess it, maybe take a peek at it behind closed doors, and decide just how much they're willing to spend on new dresses for those pretty little maids in waiting. The ARC sets the stage, and gets the discussions started.

The ARC isn't your only marketing tool, of course. There are hundreds of ways that people learn about books, from author websites to word of mouth to advertisements in industry magazines. But it's the ARC that kicks things off, much like Noah and his ark kicked off an international boat-building industry. You know. Later. After we got over that whole "fear death by water" thing that was going on at the time.

I'll be honest: There are issues with ARCs. Some people sell them, which is bad and wrong and totally uncool, and also makes me die a little bit inside. Some people don't actually get around to reading them, turning them, instead, into somewhat expensive, really weird paperweights. They're fragile, so they fall apart under any sort of rough or extended use—and for people like me, who tend to read their favorite parts eight times, take books in the bathtub, and generally...let's not say "abuse," but, instead, "experience" their reading material, this can result in my finishing the ARC in its new incarnation as a handful of unconnected pages. They aren't perfect.

That said...the ARC is a way to build buzz early. The ARC is a way to get the book out there into the world, gaining support, courting blurbs and positive reviews, and basically saying "Hi, how are you, I'd really like it if we could get to know each other better." Have I had ARCs show up on eBay? Yeah. I have. I've gritted my teeth when people came up to me to proudly tell me about the ARC that they just bought off of the Internet, and tried not to say anything when they went on to tell me that they wouldn't be buying the mass market edition because "This one is more special."

But I've had more people come up to me and tell me, in all sincerity, "I heard about your book when a friend loaned me the ARC." Or: "I saw a review posted of an ARC of your book, and that's when I decided I wanted to read it."

What brought all this on? John Scalzi has some comments on the concept of the "eARC"—an ARC issued only as an electronic file, and I found them really fascinating, from both a practical and a philosophical point of view. The discussion in the comments is also fascinating, with people calling out both the good and bad aspects of the physical and virtual ARCs. One of the ones that really spoke to me was the concept of scarcity. See, ARCs are intrinsically scarce. Only so many are printed; there is no second print run. If there's an error in the ARC, that goes out to everyone. If an ARC gets out before you want it to, well, that's your tough luck. And I look at all the fuss and bother about runaway ARCs, and wonder...

How long is really going to take for somebody to break the encryption on the eARC? And really, how long is it going to take before some people start saying "Well, if you're posting the text of something that was always intended to be free (because ARCs are not for sale, remember?), how is that piracy?" I can see the justifications from here. (No, I don't think the majority of people would ever even consider that. Sadly, as keeps coming up, piracy isn't going anywhere, and it makes my cats cry. Making my cats cry is a cruel, cruel thing.) Going eARC-only limits the chance for surprise readers, for readership on buses and in bathrooms, and for readers who don't have an ebook reader. If we go eARC-only, I won't be reading my own ARCs. Pardon me while I find this...ironic.

I hope we can find good answers. I hope we're asking the right questions. And I hope that when you're invited to the ball, you'll put on a nice dress, and you'll come.

Please?
Tags: contemplation, promotion
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  • 58 comments
The whole issue of ARCs is dicey. I can't simply imagine adding the overlay of *e*ARCs. I'll get dressed up, but I'm wearing comfortable shoes because I really think this one's gonna take a while, dear...
Sadly true.
The problem is that most pirates were never going to buy anything anyway. By putting DRM on the electronic files it just makes it harder for paying customers to buy and read the book.

For example you might want to read this blog post from wolfire software.
http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Saving-a-penny----pirating-the-Humble-Indie-Bundle
They are selling a bundle of indie games with no DRM and name your own pricing, down to a penny and they still have roughly 25% piracy. So far they have received about $830,000 by selling this way.

I know the though of someone stealing your books distresses you, but it is probably worth letting a few people steal it if you make it easier for lots of people to buy it. I for one will not buy DRM restricted books because it makes them much harder to read on my phone. I also don't trust companies to not shut down the DRM once something new comes along locking me out of the books I paid for.

All I hope is that you will think about it, as you don't have the power to change your publishers policies anyway.
I also don't trust companies to not shut down the DRM once something new comes along locking me out of the books I paid for.

As has already happened with 3 different sources of DRMed music files.

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

hms42

7 years ago

Consider Baen Books. They provide freely distributable books, unecrypted. And they sell eARC as well as ebooks later (the eARC gets you the finished book later, btw). No encryption, multiple formats.

And their experience is that reasonably priced ebooks *increase* sales of the hardcopy versions. also, the authors actually get a pretty good share of the ebook prices.

Sure, there are folks who distribute pirated copies of the pay-only ebooks/eARCs. But they are a minority.

And keep in mind that even hardcopy books get scanned, converted to ebooks and distributed. So eliminating ebooks or encrypting them doesn't really slow down the appearance of pirated ebooks by much.

Check the various alt.binaries.ebook groups on usenet to see what I mean.

So it's basically a question of how much inconvenience you are willing to put the readers/reviewers thru to at best *slow down* pirates.
Um, where, exactly, was I saying "no ebooks, DRM always always RAR?" I was saying "I like ARCs, I think ARCs are good, I am uncomfortable about the idea of going to eARC only for these reasons." I don't have a negative opinion of ebooks. I don't DRM my music. I don't think all ebook readers are pirates. I do think that my publisher is not Baen, and thus doesn't have the relationship that's leading to those gains. Selling an eARC is very different from giving one to a trusted source, having the DRM (or whatever) broken, and having the book put up on eight different torrent sites by someone who's annoyed at having been "forced" to break the DRM in the first place (true story).

Please don't turn this into me slagging on ebooks. It isn't, it won't be, and all bringing that topic up again does is make me too damn tired to want to cope.

argonel

7 years ago

branna

7 years ago

I've got a couple of autographed ARCs that I bought from their writers. My little Hollywood branch library was full of them - I think local writers/reviewers/producers donated them, which meant they did get into the commerce stream occasionally, too. But I suspect eARCs would be a huge piracy issue and one more way to cut writers & publishing cos. off from reader dollars... And, seriously, publishers going out of business benefits no one, least of all readers. I don't necessarily want to read lightly-edited/self-published books, and I *certainly* don't support my favorite writers being unable to make a living writing more books...
I just worry that going electronic-only will cut into the serendipity stream, as well as making things much harder on the potential reader. If I have a choice between "go here, enter this code, download this, sign that," and opening a cover, it's the physical ARC that's getting read. Add the piracy concern, and...

I just get woobly. And yeah, ARCs definitely enter the commerce stream from time to time. I don't actually object all that much if they do it after the book has been released.

hasufin

7 years ago

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

hasufin

7 years ago

keristor

7 years ago

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

kyrielle

7 years ago

I'm a first year library student and so had no idea what ARCs were until my children and youth media course.

The professor who's a children's librarian would bring the ARCs that she and her fellow school librarians didn't want.

I loved getting a chance to read books that I wouldn't normally and one of them introduced me to the newest series by one of my favorite authors.

Currently I'm holding onto mine, but I've seen a few for sale in the great used bookstore in town.
Exactly! That is the power of the ARC.
To answer a very specific question:

How long is really going to take for somebody to break the encryption on the eARC?

About 2.6 seconds. Well, ok, maybe a few minutes. But in terms of the time between the eARC is made available and the time somebody can actually go down to their favorite indie bookstore (shameless generic plug) and pick up something made from good honest hemp dead trees? A wee small fraction.

Now, I'm not sure they'd take the time to break the encryption on *your* book specifically... yet... but they're gonna use the same method on yours that they do on their best-seller-list books...

As for the ball? Do the guys have to wear dresses too? Or will a nice kilt do?

Gripping hand: Thanks for making me *think*; the questions you've raised are, I hope, directly relevant to my livelihood in the not too distant future.
And I hope that when you're invited to the ball, you'll put on a nice dress, and you'll come.

Please?


Well, I suppose I could, but really, I think I'd rather go with a dress shirt, slacks, and my wood tie. I just don't think I'm one of the guys that looks good in a dress.
I suppose I'll let you in anyway.
I just wanted to mention, that as a former Large Chain that begins with a W and no longer exists, bookseller, I loved the ARC and counted on the ARC to help me find new authors. I never (well, maybe not never cause I read a lot) would have picked up Kushiel's Dart had it not gotten sent to the store twice. Once I did pick it up, I hand sold it to half the planet. There were and are, lots of ARCs sitting on my shelves. I got all the early Tempe Brennan books in silly packaging (evidence bag for one of them) and got hooked on her before Bones ever came around. Hand sold the hell out of that. There are a lot more that I passed on to my staff who passed it on to a friend, etc. I never, ever sold and ARC. Maybe I should have;) Not really. I hope that they don't eliminate that. I suspect at some point someone will get me an ereader as a gift because it would be "such the perfect gift for g" and I won't be opposed to it. But I love books. The physicality of them--not just the stories. So, I hope that if they do go with an eARC and all the inherent problems there, that they'll still send out ARCs to those of us who still love the printed word.

What I wonder is, now that the chain store that was small enough to require you to sell books is gone and half the independents are gone, who gets ARCs these days? I'm assuming it's prolific Amazon reviewers and independent sellers and the Big Bs who don't really hand sell. Can I get on a list? I'll tell all my friends about the great books I'm reading.

Now, I'm going to go suck down as many pages of Feed as I can before the baby wakes up or I need to go to sleep because the baby is going to wake up and I have to be in the city at 8:30. And look pretty too.

I put down Sookie Stackhouse to read Feed. I guess maybe that means I'm pretty happy with your writing...only wish my kids had not been screaming/puking as we were leaving GG Park on Saturday. Might could have stopped by and dorked it up in the presence of a Real Writer.

Yeah; the ARC is a magical, powerful tool, and it needs to stay around.

Also, dude. The fact that you put down Sookie for Feed is amazing. I wish you'd been able to come by!

marziek

7 years ago

I've never wanted an ARC--I want the finished, the Real Deal. I consider the selling of ARCs to be theft.
A fair stance.
eARCs are a bad idea unfortunately. The DRM will be broken... in about 15 minutes flat. A cracking tool will be made in the next hour or so, and that's all folks.

It will hurt sales, in a way that conventional piracy can't - it gives the whole experience EARLY.

I'm of the firm opinion that 99% of those who pirate Item X would never have purchased it in the first place (and thus are not lost sales). I also believe that of those who would buy Item X if they couldn't pirate it, at least 80% of them will buy it anyways.

But if people get the whole kaboodle a few months early, that kills motivation to buy the book 3-6 months later.

I only see a few ways around this problem.

#1 is not ideal by any means... make eARCs only partial books. Maybe half of it. Enough for the reader to get into the book, drive interest, and push them to buy the final product... but inherently worthless as far as piracy goes.
Cons are that you get no advance reviews, and a LOT of reviewers are liable to refuse to read half a book, knowing they have to wait months to finish it.

#2 is a secure website. Distribute logins to authorized folks, and have an IP/login monitoring to detect and shut down any login credentials that are shared. Technology to detect overshared logins has been around for decades.
The con here is that all reading has to be done on the website. This gives it flexibility (any browser on any device), but ties it to constant online access and the quality of the website in question.

#3 is to significantly watermark the PDFs, so that once a copy is found to be shared, you can track down the source real easy, and blacklist them in the future (or even pursue legal action, if accompanied by some kind of NDA). The text would be included as images, so it would not be inherently extractable. And likely in an unconventional font to try and foil OCR.
This is likely the most user-friendly way of doing the whole eARC thing, as PDFs are inherently portable between all sorts of devices.


There's a future in eARCs. Everything is going "e-" and this will be no exception. It's cost saving if nothing else.

IMO, the best way to proceed with eARCs right now is simple... publishers have their registry of "People To Send ARCs To".
Work on contacting those people, and ask if they're interested or willing to accept eARCs in the future.

Then send them the files, and everyone else the paper.
I think that's a very good proposal. Let's see if that's the way things go.
There are issues with ARCs. Some people sell them, which is bad and wrong and totally uncool, and also makes me die a little bit inside. Some people don't actually get around to reading them, turning them, instead, into somewhat expensive, really weird paperweights.

I've got to say that now I've started getting ARCs, I'm kinda at a loss as to what to do with them after they've been read. I can't give them to a second-hand shop because they're marked as not being for sale, putting them in the recycling feels wrong and logistically I can't keep all of them (even though I secretly hope that I'll end up with one for the next JKR and it can be my pension fund).

Where I've got ARCs in advance of publication, I'm going down the route of having a give-away for them. That way it helps get out the message that a book is out (or coming out) and someone else gets the benefit of a free copy that they can in turn tell people about.

But it is a bit of a conundrum.

My personal take on eARCs is that they're going to cause problems in the long-run because no matter how tightly you encrypt them, someone will bust it. I know several authors who have had problems with people deliberately selling book ARCs on line to hurt sales (which makes me want to kick those people in the shins).

In other news, I picked up a copy of Rosemary and Rue from my local Waterstones yesterday and it's the next book on my To Read List.
You can donate them to high schools, women's shelters, and prisons. I give a lot of ARCs to the high school a friend of mine is librarian for, and her students review them, which teaches them about publishing and keeps the reviews coming in. Everybody wins!

Hooray, Rosemary and Rue!
In a recent discussion about music I got a number of comments from people who felt that digital versions of an "album" weren't as respectable, weren't as worthy of being taken seriously as physical CDs, even if the content was precisely the same. I wonder if there would be a similar bias against eARCs (and their stories/writers) during a changeover period when both were available.
Probably true!
Two major reasons I don't like the idea of eARCs:

1. Much harder to carry around and have people notice you're reading. When I was reading Feed I was adoring it, and I was very much going to use every chance I had to tell people just how much I was adoring it. A lot of those conversations came from people asking "What are you reading?"

2. The encryption. It would be very easy for someone to break that and widely distribute the book.
Oh, good point on number one!

Deleted comment

Very good points. Thank you.
I think of ARCs like those made-to-be-collectible Barbie dolls -- pretty to look at, but destined for a high shelf, not within daily reach. If I were lucky enough to get an ARC before the real book came out, I'd read and review of course, but it's the real book I'm truly after. I don't like the concept of e-books -- I'd rather have an actual, paper book in my hands, so an e-ARC doesn't interest me.
Oh, nicely put.

Deleted comment

Word.
I like ARCs. This one, for example (ARC of In the Cities of Coin and Spice, which happens to be on my desk)! I own a few, all either gifts from authors or charity auction items. Interetingly, almost all Cat Valente, but that's hardly relevant. Probably.

Conceptually, I like a DRM'ed and time-bombed e-arc for reviewers. Read it, review it, allow for some period after the scheduled release of the physical book for comparison, then the file eats itself. Unfortunately, folk are right, some bastard will crack that and spread it around all over the place. On the other other hand, I agree with the person who said pirates never buy, and buyers rarely pirate. Color me conflicted.
I agree that mostly, pirates never buy and buyers rarely pirate. I think highly early copies of things that people are looking forward to might break that rule, as folks rush to get in early.

ohari

7 years ago

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

ohari

7 years ago

Deleted comment

Paper is my best friend.

marziek

7 years ago

marziek

7 years ago

seanan_mcguire

7 years ago

As a reviewer? I prefer getting my hands on the pretty physical ARC. But I have read eARCs and will ask authors if they can provide one if we're hitting a deadline on an event or something and the print hasn't been sent.

However, my biggest objection to eARCs now? The publishers want to put expiration dates on them. I can't always get the book read by release date (I have a ton of books at any given time) and would like the extra time to read them. I don't think they should expire at all, but that's me.
See, I can't object to that, because of the "A" in "ARC." If they exist to get pre-release reviews, I don't care if djinn circle the globe and burn them all on official release date. Once the "A" times out, the ARC has lost its value.
Hmm. I don't think I have a conclusion, so I"m going to handwave about ARCs and see if anything pops out.

I'm a reader primarily. I occasionally review books on LibraryThing -- always if I get them through LT Early Reviewers. I don't feel like I write reviews very well, though, and I'm not sure how to develop that skillset (much less whether I'd have the time and energy to devote to doing so, if I did know how to go about it).

So...why are there so many ARCs in my collection? A few I bought, most were free. I know of at least two legit reviewers -- a magazine and a bookstore -- who sometimes sell ARCs when they're done with them. In the case of the bookstore, their sold at special events, for a nominal charge(which keeps the locusts away so everyone has a chance to look through them) and by the end of the day, I hear "just take what you want". Thus, if there's something I'm especially interested in, I'll pay a few bucks for it to make sure I get it. Mostly, these are books that are already out -- sometimes for a couple of years; occasionally, they aren't quite. The magazine, I've seen selling ARCs in a convention dealers' room. They charge a little more, but I think the idea is a) clear out the storage b) fundraise and c) get people to the table and hopefully sell subscriptions (not necessarily in that order). I've bought a few from them; mostly books I was interested in, but not interested enough to pay full cover -- had I not bought the ARC, I probably would have bought it used. Is this moral / ethical? I don't know; I seem to be OK with it, but maybe I shouldn't be.

When I have had and read an ARC sufficiently far in advance of publication, I have provided continuity-error feedback when needed. (In the case I'm thinking of, I sent it to one of the authors to pass on to the publisher, as the publisher contact info wasn't on the copy I'd won in a giveaway.)

I did buy one ARC off eBay recently; I also bought the final version when it was released. In this case, it's a collector thing -- I have both the ARC and release versions of the first in the series, and the authors are friends of mine. This ARC was somewhat hard to come by, so eBay was the only way I was going to get a copy. The seller was the Friends of the SFPL, so the money went to a good cause. Again, I don't know if it was morally / ethically correct, butit doesn't seem to bother the more talkative of the authors, at least -- I haven't heard from the other one yet.

With an eARC, I probably wouldn't bother. I don't especially like reading ebooks, at this time; I might adjust eventually.
The collectible nature of ARCs is something that comes up from time to time; as long as the book is out, so the ARC isn't being ignored when it could be garnering a review, I see no issue with it. I also do understand picking up things when you didn't care enough to pay full price, and I don't know that there's an answer for that. You're essentially neutral. You weren't a sale in the first place.

I don't do ebooks either. I keep wanting to edit them.
Some obvious comments come to mind:

* Piracy. The obvious comment.
* There is no need to "break" the encryption, because, by definition, you're handing the decryption keys along with the encrypted text. http://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt has better explanation of it, if you look for "Alice".
* Scanning an ARC is not hard. Turn it into a sheaf of loose pages, feed it into a scanning machine. I am not sure why people would put up the eARC on the torrents and not the scanned-in-ARC (or vice-versa): they seem about equivalent from the copyvio perspective.
* I remember that one of your issues with ARCs was that they're a sizable marketing expense. eARCs seem infinitely (literally!) cheaper :)
1. To scan an ARC, you must destroy the ARC. To torrent an eARC, you must upload a file. There is no comparison. Most of us don't own scanning machines.

2. No, my issue with ARCs is that they're a sizable marketing expense which people then attempt to co-opt for their own profit. Not the intent. You may not profit from an eARC the way you could from the sale of a physical ARC, but the potential for widespread distribution is much higher.

3. As a rule, eARCs are coming with protection of one form or another, whether it be a code required to open the file or a specific reader required to view it.

I dislike the idea of going to eARC only. You're not going to change my mind.

moshez

7 years ago