ARCs Explained

If you've been involved in publishing or you collect books, you probably have seen an ARC, otherwise known as an advance reading copy. Back when I was reviewing books for a newspaper, I used to get them, and I still have several. At the time, they were usually an unedited (or at least not copy edited) version of the book in a plain cover and were provided to reviewers in advance of publication so the reviews would come out when the book was published. 

They still perform that function, but as Andrew Liptak points out in this blog post, the marketing strategy around them has changed. 

In the years that I've been reviewing and writing about books, there's been an interesting sort of change to the format. Early on, they'd be pretty basic: a bland white/grey/green cover slapped onto the book's contents, or maybe with the book's cover art printed on it. They're not as durable as a finished copy. They'd be accompanied by a letter from the publicist that features the relevant details about the book and its release, advanced praise, and so forth. They came with a warning that the contents weren't final, and you'd likely come across typos that would later be corrected in the copyediting process.

Jim DeMaiolo, who recently retired as Tachyon's Marketing Director, noted that when he started out years ago, "ARCs were called galleys and they could be — literally — the manuscript copies into a galley-sized book with a plain colored paper cover and the marketing and publicity on a sheet that was inside the book, as well as, printed information on the cover," he explained. "Many times (as when I got to read the book The Game of Thrones it was literally the manuscript from George R. R. Martin. No one bothered to bind it or to send it to a printer."

That format has begun to change a bit in the last decade or so: ARCs became more like regular trade paperbacks: they might feature the full-cover artwork that would end up on the final edition, or in some cases, might feature beautiful embossing, giant quotes, specialized artwork, and a tiny label somewhere on there that that particular copy featured uncorrected text and wasn't for sale. In some cases, those changes are usually a good indication of the PR budget that the publisher is putting behind any given title. A more elaborate ARC typically means that a publisher is putting more of its weight behind that title.

"Now," DeMaiolo noted "they are basically the copyedited book with a few extra pages for sales information and publication information. They are even designed and laid out like the final book. It is a lot of work and that means that the books for say 2022 have to be basically copy edited and designed at least six months in advance of publications, usually farther ahead for blurbers and the top reviewers."