Advance
Reader
Copies

Advance Reader Copies have a long history in publishing, to gain reviews and write ups before publication.

The major purpose of ARCs today, is primarily to convince others to give a newly released novels a try so the first people who consider reading it wont’ feel like they’re the first guinea-pig to crack its spine. This works on a psychological principle known as social proof, where there is a perceived sense of safety in following what others do.

The more important function is if the potential reader has gotten to the end of the book description, and hasn’t decided if they should read it, they’ll head to the reviews to look for clues on whether they will enjoy reading the book.

When I review books, I tend to split my assessment of what’s not good into two buckets:

“This book has issues,”

or…

 “It’s fine, just not my cup of tea.”

If a book is dragging on and on and on, if it’s riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes, if there’s plot holes galore, if you’re having trouble following the action, if you get to the end and are irked because the characters were acting out of …er…character; these are all examples of book issues. You could email the author and let them know it needs a little more work before it’s ready for publication. You could just DNF it. You could leave them a star rating that reflects the quality of work you were presented. Whatever you are comfortable with and feel is best.

The other bucket of not my cup of tea novels, are things that I know I may not care for but other people love. These, as well as what you liked about a book, are wonderful to include in reviews, since they’re the treasures people search reviews to find.

Some examples of these would be things like, if a book was written in a point of view (e.g. First person vs. third) I don’t care for. Or since I love space opera, if the long winded, detailed, scientific explanations are difficult to follow, and interrupting the flow of the story, a heads up about that will give other readers an inkling on whether they should grab or avoid it. Even though they belong in the same genre, hard sci-fi and space opera are sort of opposites with some readers vehemently detesting one or the other.

This is something that many readers aren’t consciously aware of and it’s very easy to bring our biases of what makes a book good along with us, especially when we’re jumping into a new genre. We don’t realize that the expectations, or criteria that each genre needs to meet are different. My favourite example of this is when cozy mystery readers leave low reviews on Romance books because of the dearth of bodies…dead bodies, that is!

However, the most important thing is to be honest about your thoughts and feelings of the story. I would rather have brutally honest reviews over ones that were all five stars.

The thing I always avoid in a review is spoiling the ending. This is why I usually don’t look at reviews when I’m hunting for things to read, because there always seems to be one written like they’re trying to ace the assignment of listing everything that happens in the story, instead of considering how the story made them feel. Or every plot point up to just before the climax and people who haven’t read the book can tell how it ends.

Reviews can be as long or short as you want to make them. They can highlight on anything that caught your attention and irked or delighted you. Don’t worry about what the author may think (most authors avoid reading them) they’re there for your fellow readers.

Amazon’s policy

Amazon has a very strict policy for ARCS. The ebook can be given to ARC readers; however reviews cannot be exchanged for anything…so ARC readers are under no obligation to review. In fact, sometimes when people mention that they “received an ARC copy in exchange for this review,” it’s been flagged, and the review is deleted. At one point Amazon wanted people to report that they were reviewing ARC copies, but if you decide to put that in, please be careful how it’s phrased? They also want their reviewers to have spent at least $50 on Amazon in the last year. However, there are many other sites you could also review on, which are not nearly so picky, like Kobo, Barns & Noble, Google Books, Good Reads, as well as on this website.