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ARCs are advance reading copies, and I've got a couple extra for Torched, which comes out March 5. ARCs are sent to reviewers and others who can help spread the word about a book. So if you had an extra copy, would you send it to a kid's lit blogger? If so, which one? Other suggestions?

My daughter's heavily into Legally Blonde these days, so that song is the first that popped into my mind when I came home from the kids' physicals this morning (where I found out, officially, that Son is now 3/4 inch TALLER than me - great, I'm now old AND short in his estimation!) to find a DHL package on my front step.

And inside...



!!!!Yes!!!!

Lovely, gorgeous ARCS of PURGE!!!

Also included, a really encouraging note from my uber-fantastic editors, David Levithan and Jen Rees.

I knew the ARCS were in the works, but wasn't expecting them until much later in the summer, so this was a complete surprise of the bestest kind.

Once I think of something clever (and given the state of my brain with two kids out of school, no childcare and trying to write a first draft of new book, this might be a while) I will post a competition on blog to win one of these gorgeous spanking new ARCS.

But right now, Benny (sporting his new coiffure) and I are just going to go fondle and admire them some more.



:-)

I have a limited number of arcs for the second volume in The Hannah and Brandon Stories series, A Girl, a Boy, and Three Robbers, which will be published in July. I've already given out a few, so if you're interested in a copy get in touch with me soon, either through the comments here or e-mail.

So here’s some information on Advanced Reader Copies, like we promised.

ARCs, sometimes also called bound galleys, are a hugely important marketing tool often used by your publisher. They have a threefold purpose.


1. They are sent to review publications
2. They are used to sell your book to key accounts and bookstores
3. Buzz Building

Reviews
Most mainstream review publications need to receive their review copies four to six months ahead of publication date of your book. For children’s books, these publications might include, Publisher’s Weekly, School Library Journal, Bookist, VOYA, Kliatt, Kirkus, the Bulletin, etc. Also, any consumer magazines your publicist feels might make a good match would get a review copy of the book at this time. Magazines have a long lead time in putting together their monthly content and printing—thus the six months ahead of pub date guideline.

Some reviewers have fairly concrete specifications that need to be followed before they’ll consider reviewing. For example, PW won’t read the ARC if it’s not sent early enough or if only one copy is sent.

Sales
When the publishers sales reps go to sell your book to key accounts, again, usually four to six months out, they give them an ARC. They know that the best sales tool is an awesomely written book. Two months or so before publication date is another key time for ARCs as this is usually when your book is available for advance orders and the ARC is used to generate those.

Buzz
This is when the publisher decides to give ARCs away in droves, certain that if people would just read this book, they will connect with it. This could entail sending ARCs to industry bloggers, high traffic reader sights, librarian blogs or sites, or handing them away at ALA or other industry conferences.

But what if your publisher is small or regional or for some other reason doesn’t do ARCs or bound galleys?

Well, that can be a huge problem. As you can tell from the above, ARCs are a huge weapon in the marketing arsenal. I would even go so far as to consider negotiating this into my contract if I had any doubt that they would be sending ARCs, because frankly, I don’t know how else they could effectively sell a book without them.

However, if for whatever reason your publisher isn’t doing them, you can do them yourself. You probably won’t be able to achieve the same numbers that a publisher could generate, but you don’t have to settle for none.

You can make your own. The simplest way is to photocopy your galley pages, comb bind them, and cover them with a color copy of your book cover.

Perhaps the harder part is to know where to send them. One source I recommend is a book by Dan Poynter called The Self Publishing Manual. It's considered the bible for those who self-ublish, and as such covers all the promotional aspects that a publisher would be expected to cover. He has an extensive list of review sources in there. Many libraries would have this book since it's been in print for a very long time.

And here a couple of other links I found on ARC's. (There's not too much out there!)

http://bookcalendar.blogspot.com/2007/12/advanced-reading-copies.html
http://www.diyauthorpromo.com/advance-reading-copies.htm

If people have more specific questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments!

Riley and I recently discovered Artist Trading Cards (ATC) and he's super excited about them. I'm not sure if it's the fun of creating cards for people, or the idea that he is going to get fun mail that makes him more excited. (=

Today we created a Signature Card to mail out with all the swaps we do. We decided it would be cool to make it look like magnetic poetry, so Riley told me what words to use and where to place them. Then we signed it with our blog name. We did this in Photoshop so we can easily print it out to go with our handmade art when we mail it.

Riley has already started working on his cards for Jo (see "Introducing Wendi and Jo below) and is so excited about them (we won't post them until after Jo gets them in the mail so we don't ruin her surprise though). He would love to have more people to share cards with, and Wendi said that Jo would love to have more people to swap with too!!

If anyone else is interested in joining the Kids ATC swap just reply to this post and we'll share addresses via e-mail - that way they won't be on the internet for everyone to see. We hope we get some takers! (=

Don't know what Artist Trading Cards Are? Here's some info we copied from the Internet:

Basically Artist Trading Cards are any handmade art on card stock weight material. The only rules are they must be 2 1/2" x 3 1/2" ( the same size as sports trading cards) and they must be signed/dated by the artist on the back of the card. Artists then trade their cards for ones from other artists, just like kids trade sports cards, pokemon cards, etc.

Signature cards: Many ATC artists create a "business card" ATC that features a self-portrait on the front and a fact sheet about themselves on the back. They then send it out with sets they are trading. This is a lovely idea that allows artists to get to know each other more.

By: Shena and Riley (age 4)
Mommy and Riley