The ARCs are In

Advanced Read­er Copy—or ARCs—as the pub­lish­ing world calls them, are not so des­ig­nat­ed because they are for peo­ple whose read­ing skills are con­sid­ered high (i.e., advanced) but for peo­ple the pub­lish­er wish­es to read a new book in advance of pub­li­ca­tion. This is to pro­mote inter­est among those who can gen­er­ate inter­est, or buzz. They are also meant to be review copies, so that reviews of the book appear in vital pub­li­ca­tions (Library Jour­nal, Book­list, Kirkus Reviews, Pub­lish­ers Week­ly, etc.) around the time the book is actu­al­ly pub­lished, and avail­able. Ear­ly respons­es to ARCs can also sug­gest to the pub­lish­er how the book will be received, so they can change mar­ket­ing and print­ing plans. Giv­en the world we live in, it should come as no sur­prise that these days ARCs are—for eli­gi­ble folk—available on the internet.

Receiv­ing an ARC of one of my own books brings mixed emo­tions. It is a plea­sure to final­ly see the book you have writ­ten as a real book, look­ing and feel­ing like a book, even (most often, but not always) with the cov­er in place. That said, when the ARCs are cre­at­ed there is often a cer­tain amount of rewrit­ing and proof­read­ing still tak­ing place. Grant­ed, not much, and sure­ly, noth­ing fun­da­men­tal. How­ev­er, it has always both­ered me that those who read an ARC are not tru­ly read­ing the fin­ished book—for bet­ter or worse. [I once had a review of a book which ref­er­enced some­thing that was in the ARC but had been edit­ed out of the pub­lished book.]

Now I just received ARCs of my forth­com­ing book, Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor [Algo­nquin], which will be pub­lished March 10, 2015. So, here’s the deal: We’ll choose ten read­ers of this blog who enter and request a copy an ARC of the book. Two catch­es. Know you won’t be read­ing a tru­ly fin­ished copy. Sec­ond­ly, you’ll need to drop me a line as to your response to the book. That’s the bur­den of being an advanced reader.

If you’d like to be con­sid­ered to receive one of 10 signed Advanced Read­er Copies of Catch You Lat­er, Trai­tor, please fill out the infor­ma­tion below. If you are younger than age 13, please have an adult fill out the form for you. Your requests have been received. The give­away is now closed. We’ll draw 10 names at ran­dom and noti­fy the win­ners by Sep­tem­ber 20th.