Rose-Owls and Pumpkin Girls

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?

1. The Rosemary and Rue ARC giveaway is still running, from now through Whenever I Happen To Get Up Tomorrow Morning. So assume that I'll be announcing the winner sometime between five and eight AM PST (which is when I'll be coherent enough to deal with complex things like "the random number generator" and "counting").

2. Because I'm doing the drawing so early in the day, if you win, and you're able to get me your mailing address with reasonable alacrity, your ARC may actually go out in tomorrow's mail. I'm just saying.

3. Late Eclipses continues to be finished, which has me rather at lost ends. I figure I'll finish this zombie short story that I'm working on, and then crack open Discount Armageddon, see what Verity and the gang have been up to while I was away. Nothing says "relaxation" like "getting straight to work on a different book."

4. I am officially sick. Thank you, coughing people on my plane and annoying small child whose parents refused to make you stop kicking the back of my seat. Thank you so much.

5. My play list consisting of nothing but versions of the song "Rain King" by the Counting Crows is now two hours long, and incredibly soothing. If you've ever wondered why that song was my current music so much of the time, well...this is why.

6. Zombies are still love.

People have been asking me what galleys are for. Why do I have them, why would I need them, what am I planning to do with them, and—most commonly asked of all—why can't they have one. (Seriously.) So:

Galleys, ARCs (Advance Reader/Reviewer Copies), and other pre-release forms of a book have exactly one purpose: to drive up the book's visibility, and hence, sales. They're primarily given to bookstores, especially independent bookstores (where a good-looking ARC can potentially increase their order by quite a lot), reviewers (both print and online; the blogging community has been getting an increasing number of pre-release review copies over the past few years), and authors, who are a little crazy at the best of times, and are likely to get crazier as our book releases approach.

As authors, we're expected to distribute our ARCs and galleys in whatever way will do this most good. Also to our mothers. So we send them to smaller bookstores that our publisher may not know about, we give them to bloggers we know well enough to ask for reviews, and we hand them to other authors in hopes that they'll find our work appealing. And we try to keep the cats from using them as furniture (although this is basically a lost cause). ARCs are interesting, because they have—simultaneously—a very high importance and a very short shelf-life. Once the mass market edition hits shelves, dude, it's better-printed, better-designed, better-able to stand up to stress, and best of all, it's better-edited, because ARCs are printed before page proofs are returned. Once the mass market edition exists, the ARC is an interesting curiosity, and you'd better pray you found them all good homes. Or that the cats really, really like them.

Right now, I'm in the "reviewers I know personally" and "setting up competitions and give-aways" stage of our program. I'll have a few copies with me at BayCon and DucKon, naturally, and much like the art cards at Wondercon, there will be a Secret Password that gets me to give you a book (if I have one on me). I'm also questing for places where books need to go, and have found some fun promotional channels that I'm testing out.

Galleys. They're not just to keep the cats entertained while I'm at work.

So here are our ribbon options; vote for your top five. Keep in mind that we want to go for both variety and interest, and that some of these will have a longer projected 'shelf life' than others (as, well, the ones with release dates are only really good through WorldCon). Adding a 'fun' ribbon or two will make people more likely to take the more obviously promotional ones. Psychology is fun!

Many of these would be/will be split onto two lines.

[Poll #1367641]

Vote, and be heard. Feel free to comment with additional suggestions, or with color ideas.