If you were active in twitter about an hour ago, you would have noticed that there's a new drama brewing.
Someone's selling BEA ARCs in ebay!
It's common knowledge that Advanced Review Copies are not for resale. Especially since when you get the ARC in your hand, chances are the book is not released yet. Obviously, it's common etiquette to follow the simple requirement that you don't resale the ARC in any way.
But, seems like some can't read the simple English print on the cover of the ARC copy saying
NOT FOR SALE.
Now this is not the first time that this kind of stunt has happened. Sometime back someone was selling them through instagram. Now ebay. Next they'll probably even try to sell it through Amazon and Book Depository. Who knows?
And I am quite pissed by this because do you have an idea how unfair this is to International bloggers?
I am not trying to boast here, but I have good blogging stats. Enough to request and receive an ARC from a publisher. But I've never received one.
Because I live far away.
And there are a lot of International bloggers out there who may not ever get the chance to receive a physical ARC, because they live too far away, and shipping costs a lot, so publishers are reluctant to send us copies.
You may hate me for what I am going to say now, but here's what I think.
They should stop handing out ARCs to random people at events like BEA.
Just because they live in the US, and just because they can attend such events, unlike people like me around the world who simply can't afford to travel all over to the US and attend the event, I don't think publishers should just simply give them ARCs.
If you're giving them out to random people like these, who then go on to sell them in online stores, what's the whole point in us INT bloggers sending publishers requests and working hard to improve our blog stats so we'll fit into your requirements?
When I heard about this particular drama, I was boiling in anger. Because some random person could go to BEA and get an ARC of a book that I am dying to get my hands on and sell it to someone else even before it's released.
Call me jealous. I don't care. This is not about ARC envy. I am not jealous of the people who genuinely deserve to get those ARCs, I just think that it's totally unfair that you hand out these ARCs to people who don't even respect the basic etiquette of ARCs,
What do you guys think?
Is it fair that random people can get access to ARCs?
What is your opinion on the ARC selling business?
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