Over the past few years, I’ve been reviewing books regularly for our local independent bookstore. That means I’m often reading and reviewing books before they hit the market. “What?” you ask. “You get to read books before they come out? How does that work and what is it like?”
It’s often strange to be reading books before they launch but after five years of reviewing for the bookstore, I’ve gotten used to it.
First of all, I’m reading lots of reviews as I always have. That’s what librarians do, they read reviews, decide what fits their patrons’ reading interests. Librarians and booksellers order books, often months before they come out so they are ready for reading on launch day. With that in mind, I get to sort through upcoming books (ARCs) the bookstore gets and decide what I want to review months before the book comes out.
What’s an ARC? ARCs are Authorized Review Copies or Advance Reader Copies. There are also eARCs, same thing just digital. Publishers print copies of the books before they are ready for distribution (three to six months ahead of time) and send these ARCs to libraries, booksellers, and to magazines, newspapers, and journals for review.
The thing about ARCs is they aren’t quite ready for mass distribution. Pictures, maps, indices, bibliographies, bios, and more can be missing. Early ARCs may be missing page numbers in tables of contents and even page numbers themselves.
As a reviewer, you have to remember that the ‘extras’ will be in the official, published version. Glaring errors may be caught, grammatical and spelling errors may still be with the final version and that’s frustrating. Of course, there are disclaimers and notices that remind reviewers not to quote from the ARC.
ARCs come in all shapes and sizes, in all varieties. Some publishers are known for providing the cover art, others keep the covers plain vanilla although that trend seems to be going away. Academic publishers don’t usually send out ARCs unless they are distributing fiction and even then, they may not print ARCs. You have to realize that there is a cost for setting up the book to print, so the smaller the press, the less likely they are to run ARCs.
Cool things to learn from ARCs are the number of copies for initial runs; marketing segments and publicity campaigns; social media blitzes; and sometimes the number of ARCs available for review. The ARC might include age group, lists of additional items not included in the ARC like maps and endpaper designs. Almost all include the range of formats (ebook, print, audio), launch date, and the price.
As a reviewer, it is great fun to read books as they are coming out, to read the hype in ads and promotions by the publishers, and then experience the book itself. Of course, reviewers end up with lots of books to populate their shelves and share with their friends. The only drawback, and it’s a small one, is you cannot sell ARCs which means lots of books that end up in Little Free Library boxes.
It turns out that ARCs are only about 70 years old. Before that, reviewers had to get their books already printed and ready for public consumption. Now I’m really curious about the rationale behind ARCs. Do you want to know more about ARCs? Here’s an article about ARCs and their beginnings.
https://lopezbooks.com/articles/about_uncorrected_proofs/
