Today we are going to talk about ARCs, one of the most powerful tools available to any author including self-published authors.

 

However, before we get ahead of ourselves and ask questions like how to self-publish an ARC or how to market a book using ARCs, let us find out what these actually mean.

 

WHAT IS ARC?

 

The full form of ARC stands for Advanced Reader Copies. These kinds of copies are quite popular in the literary community and let us explain how it is different from a book.

 

Whenever a book is published, it is published according to a plan of the number of books that the author or the publisher wants to be in circulation, this is also the same in the case of a self-publishing process.

 

When it comes to ARCs, they are pre-release versions that need to get printed for different purposes. For the purpose of not regular readers but advanced readers.

 

These Advanced Reader Copies are sent to important people in the literary community so that whenever the book is published there can be a significant number of reviews about the book already on the internet and media.

 

These copies are sent out to literary critics, different book clubs and organisations which are very closely tied to the author, journalists, other authors, bloggers, important people related to the subject of the book and reviewers of every kind including influential Amazon reviewers.

 

However, regular Amazon customers do not get access to the ARC of the book. Nor can it be bought in any bookstore, both online and offline.

 

You can basically think of this as something like a pre-released movie that needs to be sent out to important people such as critics as well as the censor board and even movie theatres for sample and trial reasons.

 

Sometimes these ARCs might not even look like the final product and this is quite common and sometimes they might not even be copy edited.

 

Since the book is not being printed in large numbers, the cost of printing ARCs can be significantly high and sometimes they are even sent out digitally.

 

They can be an excellent promotional tool that will allow the author to promote their book even before it is released.

 

Of course, that goes without saying that you need to send out Advanced Reader Copies for free.

 

Now that we know what ARCs are, let us find out how they can be used as a promotional tool to promote a new book.

 

HERE ARE THE WAYS TO USE ARC TO PROMOTE NEW BOOKS

 

· BLOGGERS

 

When we ask the question of how Advanced Reader Copies help your book reviews, one of the very first people that comes to our mind are bloggers.

 

Bloggers have an amazing impact on the whole online community and that is also applicable to the literary community.

 

Therefore, if you want your book to get noticed online and know how to use ARC copies to promote new books then you need to promote it to the bloggers who are relevant and have many readers.

 

You can gift them free copies and that will make sure that you are sending them out something in a non-biased way simply for review and you are leaving it to their discretion if they want to review it or not.

 

If they like your book then they are definitely going to review it and before your book even gets released you will have very good reviews of your book online.

 

· JOURNALISTS

 

If you want your book to have the same impact on media as it had online with the blogging community then you need to send out ARCs of the new book to prominent journalists.

 

You must make sure that these journalists at the right people for your book and you can use your own discretion on it.

 

For example, if you are writing your new book about cricket then you must send out the Advanced Reader Copies to a sports journalist who usually reviews anything related to sports including books.

 

You must also make sure that you are choosing the right media house that has an interest in the topic that you are writing about.

 

You simply cannot send out a fantasy novel copy to a media house that covers only parliamentary politics.

 

The sky is the limit simply because you can utilise ARCs to great effect if you simply know what you are doing.

 

· INFLUENCERS

 

You might be thinking about the fact that what kind of influencer likes reviewing books because all you might see are influencers reviewing everything except books, but you must know that there is an excellent community of literary influencers online that solely focus on reviewing the literature of every kind.

 

You can also take the risk and send out ARCs to influencers that influence people on the topics that you have written on.

 

The key thing to understand is to only send out things to people that actually have enthusiasm for the topic that you have written on.

 

If you keep on sending out copies irrespective of the person then you can send out as many copies as you want but you will never get good results.

 

· CONTESTS AND GIVEAWAYS

 

A simple way to make sure that there is hype and enthusiasm among the readers for your book and also make sure that this is an incredible promotional moment is to rely on contests.

 

These contests can be in the form of giveaways that you can organise on book websites such as Goodreads.

 

You can also approach literary content creators and ask them to start a giveaway competition and the winners will get an advanced copy.

 

This will of course have to be for free because you cannot charge someone for a giveaway.

 

You must also make sure that you have utilised all the promotional potential of the giveaway by promoting it over and over again and making sure it garners a lot of attention.

 

It is very rare for any regular reader to get their hands on an ARC and that is why this will be quite the thing if you decide to give away ARCs as a part of a giveaway to regular readers.

 

This was the blog on how you can utilise ARCs to promote your new book and we hope this has been helpful to you.

 

However, if you are someone who is looking to self-publish your new book and you are also planning on sending out ARCs but you have no prior experience in doing so then we are here to help you.

 

We are Orange Publishers and we are the fastest growing and the most popular self-publishing book house in India and we will take care of everything from the printing to the publishing as well as the sending out of ARCs to all the relevant people that you want.

 

We also do copyright and we have our own extensive team of book cover designers, editors, illustrators and everything else that goes into book publishing. We do everything in-house.

 

Additionally, we also do book promotional content creation. We welcome you to check out our services.