ARCs, a Coda (and a contest!)

So I’m catching up on my blog reading, and my buddy Colleen Gleason pointed me over to the recent dust-up at Smart Bitches about this whole selling-ARCs on eBay thing. (And my oh my, it was a dust-up, wasn’t it? There was some serious smackage going on there, and obviously some sort of feud with Maili and MJD that I couldn’t quite follow, but whatev.) Lots of opinions there. I didn’t post becaue I think my thoughts on the issue are much in line with Lani Diane Rich’s and her post did just fine presenting the matter. Go look it up if you care.

I came away from the blog with the impression that P.C. Cast personally paid to print out 30 copies to give to people who specifically requested them. Regifting in any form is always an ooky thing to witness, especially when one discovers it on a website. I think, in her position, I’d be taken aback. Miffed. Seriously miffed. Like, the kind where there’s blood.

But I know that in my case at least, ARCs were sent, unsolicited, to a whole bunch of folks — booksellers, PR people, whatever. (When I worked at the newspaper, we’d get a dozen or so a week, and we never even did book reviews at my branch.) In fact, I recently got a sublime and much-cherished (as in, I printed it out and read it aloud to Sailor Boy and anyone else who would stand still long enough) email from a bookseller who got an ARC, read it, enjoyed it, and is making it a staff pick come July. Boy, do I love this woman. But she didn’t know me, she didn’t know my book, and had my ARC not been sent out, I doubt that she would have gotten her hands on it. For my money, it was worth it to risk a few ARCs in the hands of people who wanted it off their hands in order to have the opportunity for an early read from someone who, given the chance, is going to recommend and maybe even hand sell my book to her customers.

Here’s the point in the blog where I resist doing the “priceless” MasterCard commercial.

Anyway, because I’m obsessive like that, I went ahead and searched for who else has an early copy of my book. Here’s what I found:

The eBay seller had TWO copies of my book. (S)he sold the first on April 22 in a heated, 13-bid auction for $25.04, which the observant reader will note is a full two dollars and four cents above the hardcover cover price. The second was sold on May 10 (someone who knows eBay better will have to tell me if this means the seller got another copy later, or just staggered the sales to help it look “rare”?) in an eight-bid auction for $27. 75, which is $4.75 over the cover price of the hardcover.

What does this mean? These people are paying basically twice the cost of your average trade paperback for a typo-ridden paperback. They are either collectors or they really really really really want to read my books. My vanity is hoping for the latter.

I also discovered that a copy of my ARC was found by a BookCrossing maven “in a hotel exchange library” in New Mexico. Wouldn’t we all like to hear the story of how it got there? As a long-time fan of BC, I’m tickled pink to see that I’m already an entry. Can’t wait to see what happens once it’s released!

What do I hope for these books? I hope that the people who read them love them and recommend Secret Society Girl to their friends and family and grocery store check out clerks and dental hygenists and gynecologists and meter readers and babysitters and girl scouts and hairdressers and secretaries and teachers and ballet instructors and people they pass on the street.

This weekend, I’m signing stacks of ARCs at BEA. I hope every person who gets one does one or more of the following: read it, love it, buy another copy when it comes out, recommend it to someone else. I know that’s a lot to hope.

Anyway, in honor of ARC readers everywhere, and in solace for those who won’t be at the big ARC free-for-all of BEA, I’m doing an ARC giveaway right here on Diana’s Diversions! This weekend, I will be giving away two copies (sorry folks, my supply is running way low) of the ARC of Secret Society Girl. One copy will be given to a person who comments on this blog post. One copy will be given to a recipient of the Secret Society Girl Newsletter. And you know what that means, don’t you boys and girls? It means that if you sign up for my newsletter and post, you have two chances to win!* You can sign up for the newsletter here:

Click to join SecretSocietyGirl

And, in case the thought of my lovely collector’s edition, original cover, typo-ridden ARC is not enough to tempt you, rest assured that there is some fabulous secret members-only info to be found on the newsletter very very soon.

Now, here is the catch: to be eligible for the “posting” ARC prize, in your post you must describe exactly what you are going to do with my ARC if you win. The juicier, the better. In fact, if you tell me that you plan to burn my ARC in a ritual fire in front of a captive studio audience of, say, 350 women in the 15-35 age range after stating “This is the most shocking, salacious, sexy, and sensational thing I’ve seen this century,” I may send you a hoodie, too.

Just sayin’.

*Only one ARC to each winner.