The Independent Book Publishers Association has decided to take punitive action against members who sell ARCs or galleys. PMA board member Steve Carlson acknowledged that online booksellers may have the legal right to offer the galleys but that the sale of them was in contravention to the best interests of the independent presses. PMA discontinued the discount for fees selling books through AbeBooks “which lists approximately 200,000 galleys and other ARCs for sale.”
Scott Laming, a spokesperson for Abe, said that it won’t change its policies and so long as the bookseller has the right to sell the book, Abe won’t dictate to its booksellers what to sell. Carlson acknowledged that “most publishers are resigned to the fact that review copies will be sold online as part of the price of doing business” the sale could hurt the reputation of the publisher and the author because a galley or review copy often has errors.
This is one reason I wish that publishers would move to e review copies. The staggering waste of paper and postage and the fear of sales could be eliminated through the use of e review copies.
Via Publisher’s Weekly.
I know we discussed this, about moving ARCs to ebooks, but I wonder if one fear is that doing that will make sharing of ARCs too easy in ebook format.
Yep, but there is technology that can prevent that. Harpercollins did an early preview for the media of Victoria Alexander’s exclusive “e” material and you had to email the publicist to get a download code. While I am not in love with the reader that Harper Collins uses, there seems to be some kind of software that could be tracked. I.e., a special Mobi pocket PID or something like that.
Libraries have some system, obviously, that renders your book unreadable after a certain period of time and maybe that is what publishers do. I think that there are alot of resources available out there that could be implemented on an “e” level to reduce some of the piracy concerns and reduce costs.
To me the most interesting thing about the original article was the PMA’s admission that ARC recipients have a legal right to sell them.
We’ve found that it’s mostly reviewers (except Jane, of course) who are reluctant to receive the eARCs. On our whole promo list, there are maybe a handful who will take ARCs electronically. Believe me, we would love to eliminate the costs of printing and mailing!
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