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dancinghorseBrought to my attention to by one of my Lipizzan-group buddies:
Some enterprising soul is selling an Advance Reading Copy of one of my forthcoming books on ebay. Listed as "unread," no less.
My agent is contacting Roc's sales department to request that Mr. Entrepreneur be summarily and permanently removed from Roc's list of ARC recipients.
For those not familiar with how publishing works, ARC's or bound galleys are sent out several months in advance by publishers to reviewers and booksellers and other parties who may be helpful in promoting and selling the book. These ARC's are limited in distribution and are not to be sold, though they often are as collector's items--however, the ethics of the practice dictate that the seller be so kind as to wait until the book has officially been published.
Posting it on ebay for $49.95 (cover price is listed as $16.00), which is 100% clear profit and of which the author sees not one cent, is not the point of the exercise, people. I particularly like the way the photo of the ARC shows prominently and clearly the label, NOT FOR SALE.
Don't you just love the honest, ethical, and considerate nature of our modern society?
Some enterprising soul is selling an Advance Reading Copy of one of my forthcoming books on ebay. Listed as "unread," no less.
My agent is contacting Roc's sales department to request that Mr. Entrepreneur be summarily and permanently removed from Roc's list of ARC recipients.
For those not familiar with how publishing works, ARC's or bound galleys are sent out several months in advance by publishers to reviewers and booksellers and other parties who may be helpful in promoting and selling the book. These ARC's are limited in distribution and are not to be sold, though they often are as collector's items--however, the ethics of the practice dictate that the seller be so kind as to wait until the book has officially been published.
Posting it on ebay for $49.95 (cover price is listed as $16.00), which is 100% clear profit and of which the author sees not one cent, is not the point of the exercise, people. I particularly like the way the photo of the ARC shows prominently and clearly the label, NOT FOR SALE.
Don't you just love the honest, ethical, and considerate nature of our modern society?
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 02:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 03:07 pm (UTC)This book won't be out until October. I hope no one buys the one on ebay. I rather object to other people making money off my and my publishers' efforts, with no return to either of us.
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Date: 2004-07-31 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 05:52 pm (UTC)But it could be pointed out to eBay that the items ARE marked "Not for Sale."
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Date: 2004-07-31 03:17 pm (UTC)As someone who reviews books on the side, I am utterly flabbergasted. I can't even imagine doing something like that. To me, getting the chance to read an ARC is a gift, and taking advantage of that gift is just SO WRONG!
I'm ashamed, and on behalf of the many honest reviewers out there I just have to say 'we're not all like that!'
By the way, I'm new. :) Love your work, I'm reading 'Horse Goddess' at the moment, and I adore Lippizans and love reading about your horses. I envy you being able to live with them (even though I know they're a lot of work). Hope you don't mind me reading you.
--Kara
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Date: 2004-07-31 03:29 pm (UTC)I did submit a query to ebay, but the intellectual-property-rights restrictions seem to apply only to software, music, and films, so I doubt I'll get anything out of them. I see no point in contacting the seller as I know perfectly well what the response will be.
Best bet is to not buy anything from him, and spread the word that the practice of selling ARC's prior to publication is unethical.
Note to self: Notify Tor and Harlequin as well as Penguin that their promotional money would be better spent elsewhere.
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Date: 2004-07-31 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 04:33 pm (UTC)---L.
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Date: 2004-07-31 05:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 05:56 pm (UTC)It's not against the law to sell things marked Not For Sale unless they're foodstuffs or such covered by consumer laws--after all, I could mark all my own books Not For Sale and then sell them if I wanted to. It's extremely poor practice, though, and eBay might be sensitive to it.
I understand some publishers will penalize independent bookstores that sell books ahead of date. Seems that's the least they could do in this case to this seller.
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Date: 2004-07-31 06:05 pm (UTC)The other sf publishers may want to do the same. He's selling October ARCs from Forge, Baen, and the other sf lines. I would presume that he does this every month and has been doing so for years. It's a nice little scam for him. If it dries up, I'm sure he'll find some other way to score some instant money.
I note he sells electronics as well. I wonder where he gets those?
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Date: 2004-07-31 10:40 pm (UTC)(Since Baen's doing runs of ARCs that barely cover our reviewers right now, I'm curious where they're coming from. Ours, however, are not marked "Not for Sale" and few ARCs are from most publishers. If yours are, it is indeed rare, I might add -- remember, production is what I do. I see ARCs from just about every house. Baen finds it to be added sales, more advertising, the more ARCs go around, but I am curious who the heck go ahold of a copy of our ARCs since we have so damn few this season.)
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Date: 2004-07-31 11:12 pm (UTC)The reason why Roc trade-paper ARC's are so plain, and labeled NOT FOR SALE, is because Roc does not want them sold. Period. They are for review use only. Apparently while ARC's were being produced with proofs of the actual covers on them, they looked too much like the real thing. And were being sold as if they were. And the powers that be were not amused. I'm not just overreacting here. This is against company policy.
If these were films, music, or software, ebay would be down on this seller like a ton of bricks. It is strictly against ebay policy (check out the section on Security and Intellectual Property) to hock advance copies of electronic media. I didn't see anything about print media, and they may tell me they don't care--but I didn't think it would hurt to ask. Especially since this guy has a whole gamut of October releases for sale, from a gamut of publishers.
Anyway. Whether or not ebay deals with this guy, I expect Roc will do something about him. And that's where it's really going to hurt--if his source of freebie grocery money suddenly dries up.
I care less what happens to the things after publication of the book. Then they become a legitimate collector's item and will in the natural order of things show up on dealers' tables. Meanwhile they're a promotional tool and this is abuse thereof.
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Date: 2004-08-01 04:14 am (UTC)And FWIW, this seller is new to me -- I've been pointed at two others in recent months, also selling ARCs in relatively organized fashion (though at much less drastic prices). And those two were (a) more easily identified, and (b) reviewers whose names and column-spaces you'd recognize if I mentioned them.
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Date: 2004-08-01 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 06:39 am (UTC)Almost all of the ARCs we get come from our sales reps. (I've only seen two Baen ARCs ever, one being for a reprint omnibus and one for the new Weber; the latter, the owner of the store is a huge fan of, but we had to beat people off with sticks until we hid the damn thing where No One could see it.) On occasion, when someone is curious about a book that the store didn't see as an ARC, we can ask a rep, and they will dig up an ARC.
That said, the very first fan letter I received for SUN SWORD came well before publication; someone had one of the ARCs because they'd paid 30.00 for it (the buy-it-now price) on ebay. They were just so excited, any annoyance I might otherwise have felt kind of evapourated. And, you know, first fan letter for the novel. I am so easily distracted <rueful g>.
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Date: 2004-08-01 02:08 pm (UTC)But that's sucky. I doubt very much that he'll sell it though -- that's a high price, and it doesn't seem to be up as an auction.
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Date: 2004-08-01 04:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 04:02 pm (UTC)But yes- notify as many publishers as you can of this guy! And try again with Ebay. This is as illegal as selling a rock and claiming it's from the moon, in the end.
--K
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Date: 2004-07-31 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 04:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 04:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 04:52 pm (UTC)It's not a copyright violation, no, but by selling promo materials in advance of publication, he may be in violation of ebay policy. Ebay has an intellectual-property-rights stipulation, with a section for promotional materials. It's aimed at advance copies of music and films, but I cited it in my query, saying that the ARC is an advance promo for a published book and the seller is not authorized by me as copyright holder or by the publisher as distributor to sell it, and this fact is prominently displayed on the cover, which is photographed in the item listing with NOT FOR SALE clear to read.
I don't know what good this will do, but it was worth a try.
He also has a number of other ARCs for sale, all for October books, and they're all from different publishers. So he's getting hold of ARCs with a clear intent to turn around and sell them at a considerable profit. Six at $49.95--do the math. If he's doing it monthly, he's making a nice little bit of grocery money. Ebay may not be bothered to stop him, but the publishers may want to shut him off, since he's not reading or reviewing any of them.
Btw,
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Date: 2004-07-31 06:34 pm (UTC)I'm guessing that for fifty bucks, it's collectors, but it's just a thought.
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Date: 2004-07-31 09:08 pm (UTC)Of course, the reviewer's problem with ARCs is that if you don't dispose of them, they accumulate over time until they take over large amounts of bookshelf space. (Two full-size bookcases, double-shelved, plus a couple of further stacks, plus several stacks & a bunch of banker-boxes full of old-fashioned unbound proofs or bound xoxed pages. And growing, now that I'm actively reviewing again.)
You will never see an ARC sent to me for sale on eBay ahead of publication date, though I admit to eyeing some of the more venerable volumes on those shelves from time to time and wondering whether they've appreciated. (FWIW, I am not convinced that eBay's the best place to sell used/collectible books, from a seller's perspective.)
OTOH, I have been known to donate ARCs, very occasionally including prepublication material, to my local SF convention's charity auction. What with my dormant reviewing status over the last couple of years, it's been a good while since prepub's been an issue in that line -- though now that I'm back in the AMAZING stable, that may change again. FWIW, as far as I've ever been able to tell, the bidders at those auctions are in the collector segment -- to the extent that I've known people who buy both the ARC and the first edition of the book. The theory as I've heard it is that one preserves the ARC for collectible value and reads the finished book -- and, thereby, also ensures that the author gets his or her percentage.
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Date: 2004-07-31 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 03:06 am (UTC)Heh.
Thing is, I do for the most part like having the ARC library around; they are in no few cases my reading copies of the books in question (one doesn't necessarily get both an ARC and a finished copy of any given book), and while using them as such cuts into their theoretical value as collectibles, that's not a major consideration for the majority of the volumes.
And I do donate out some of the material that comes in -- again, typically to convention charity auctions.
It's not a moral thing, really (at least not once the publication window closes). It's just the perennial pack rat's problem of having sufficient space for one's loot.
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Date: 2004-07-31 09:14 pm (UTC)While I completely agree with the moral outrage, strictly speaking the seller is not in fact clearing 100% profit on the final selling price -- there's eBay's listing fee to cover, and depending on payment methods accepted, whatever processing fee Paypal or its equivalent is charging these days.
Which is one reason it's been ages since I've sold anything on eBay; the pricing models I see people using, and the kinds of things I'd want to sell (definitely NOT including prepub ARCs), are such that I am not confident I'd make enough to make the time-investment worthwhile.
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Date: 2004-07-31 11:25 pm (UTC)It's a great scam for him, especially since he's got the "advance copy" wrinkle. If these were older books, he wouldn't have that going for him.
Would be nice if ebay extended its policy to include promotional copies of print media. Who knows, maybe it will.
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Date: 2004-07-31 10:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-07-31 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 01:30 pm (UTC)ugh
Date: 2004-07-31 10:44 pm (UTC)Re: ugh
Date: 2004-07-31 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 04:21 am (UTC)Just think how quickly J. K. Rowling would be talking lawsuit if an ARC of the next Harry Potter novel were offered on EBay ahead of the publication date!
If not Rowling, then Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Danielle Steele.... You get the idea. These people have publishers and agents who can be reached by your publisher, agent, etc.
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Date: 2004-08-01 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-01 03:27 pm (UTC)If there is a silver lining, just consider this: at least he didn't scan the book and put it up on his Web site. :}
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Date: 2004-08-01 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-03 08:01 pm (UTC)Old ARCs
Date: 2004-08-09 03:44 pm (UTC)Personally, I return mine to the author (if I can without running up my own expenses) or ask them if there's another reviewer I can pass the copy along to (if I like the work and want to promote it). But then I'm not reviewing a large volume.
Best regards,
Alan