Hello friends, this letter comes to you a mere 16 days before the release of the first book of my upcoming series, The Austen Chronicles, hits the shelves. How do I feel about that? I have no idea how to feel. I am thrilled, and in awe, and terrified. If you’ve ever driven alone at night on an old country road and you saw some deer on the side of the road, it’s like that. They are so cool and only you have that experience at that moment with you and the deer and it feels transcendent. However, you must admit that deer are unpredictable and could run into the road at any second and you must swerve and then you wreck and it’s a whole big mess. So, yeah.
Anyway, to the subject of this month’s essay…
Imagine that someone was willing to give you a free book. Sounds great, doesn’t it? I mean, who doesn’t want a free book? I do. Yes, please. Of course, there must be a catch, right? Well, in this case, there is a small catch. In exchange for the free book, the writer and publisher of the book would like you, the recipient of said free book, to post your feelings about the book online. If you are a person on the internet, which you must be to be receiving this letter, you are likely someone who has shared your opinion online about things without first getting a free book. This is so much better than that right?
In the book industry, there is a thing called the Advance Reader Copy (ARCs for short, not to be confused with Arks, which is something we’ll leave for Indiana Jones to contend with). I’ve been getting them for years. As a teacher, people throw ARCs my way all the time. Sometimes, they send me the ARC when I didn’t even ask for them. I would just go to my work mailbox or even my home mailbox and out of nowhere, there is a package that is book shaped and sized. There will be a note that says something like, “Please consider this book for your next class,” and then they list all the virtues of said book. In exchange for that, I didn’t have to do anything. I didn’t even need to leave a review. It is true that all around the world teachers have shelves full of books they didn’t request and didn’t want, but because they are teachers, they hung onto them.
While this still happens for print books, generally at book shows and big events like the American Library Association national conference. When my wife went to the ALA conference in Indy one year, she came home with a full library of new books that had yet to be published. They gave them to her in hopes that she would buy a copy for her library. It must work because people keep doing it and book nerds keep nerding out at the prospect of getting a stack of free books.
Generally, the way that ARCs work now is that folks who are keen to read books before anyone else and who love to write opinions on the internet are able to sign up for a service where the books are sent electronically. There are all kinds of services like Net Galley, Edelweiss, Book Sirens, and Book Sprout that offer readers Digital Reading Copies (I am just interjecting here that we still call them ARCs because DRCs sounds dumb) in exchange for a fair, honest review posted online.
Now you may be saying that it makes total sense for the textbook folks to give out books to teachers who may require that book and thus, hundreds or thousands of students will buy that book. It makes sense for publishers to give books to librarians who will buy copies for their libraries. Gifts to the right people can easily lead to sales. Why then, you may ask, would anyone want to send out a free book in exchange for nothing but a review? What good is a review? If the person already read the book that they got for free, why would they buy a copy? That isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison. You’d be right on that. Apples have nothing to do with anything.
However, according to Forbes, positive reviews can lead to a HUGE increase in sales of a book. The more reviews, the more sales. If say, a hundred people read a book and are talking about it online, then they will encourage some of their friends and followers to read it, and then they talk about it, or write about it, and on and on it goes. If no one knows about the greatest book in the world, the book is still great, but it might as well be sitting, unpublished in the author’s drawer.
Reviews mean views and views mean purchases. The biggest favor any reader can do for a writer is to write a review online. Join Goodreads or leave a review on Barnes and Noble or Amazon. Higher-rated books get moved up to the top of the list, which makes them more visible, which in turn makes them more likely to be read, which makes them more likely to be reviewed, and on and on it goes. Word of mouth is the best kind of advertising. If your pal said something is good, you are much more likely to give it a try than if some random spokesperson says the thing is good. I do a lot of reviewing for a lot of ARCs. I know I need to do a better job of reviewing books that are already out because every little bit of good karma helps. If you love something, tell someone else about it. Don’t keep that love a secret!
So, it is friends, that while you are all waiting for the metaphorical deer to look majestic or run into the road, you have the chance to actually read my book RIGHT NOW! Because you are a newsletter subscriber, you have the chance to get a free ARC of Welcome to Mansfield. Please follow this link to Book Sprout. You need to create an account to get access to the book, but it is totally worth it because not only is my book on there, there are tons of other great books just looking for their readers. If you do write a review, please share it with me via email or tag me on social media.
Notes from my Bookshelf
In preparation for an appearance on Spider-Dan and the Secret Bores podcast, I re-read one of my all-time favorite books, Catch-22. It is still amazing. I know it frustrates readers and they think it is stupid and annoying, but I’ve always thought that was the point. War is stupid, annoying, and frustrating.
Will Sommer put out an excellent piece of investigative journalism called Trust the Plan. He dives deep into Q-Anon. It is a dirty, murky pool. So glad he did the diving, not me.
Finally, for people who love joy, please pick up the Upside-Down Magic series by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins (AKA E. Lockhart). What an amazing look at the power of special education. I love it so much.
Notes from my Keyboard
The third book in The Austen Chronicles isn’t even being written yet, but Mary Bennet keeps telling me stuff. She wants me to hurry up and finish with That Other Dashwood Girl. I keep telling her that I plan to be done by the end of June. She is antsy. I don’t blame her. We both have a lot to say.
Thanks again for subscribing. By the next time you hear from me, Welcome to Mansfield will be out in the universe! You can preorder a physical copy from Barnes and Noble from that link if you wish. So exciting!
ARF
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