Don't Try This At Home, Kiddies, or the Killer Lipizzans Will Get You

[dancinghorse]

Brought 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?

Comments

[badgermirlacca.livejournal.com]

The fact that the book is being sold in advance of the sale date doesn't threaten copyright in the least. And the copy itself contains her copyright notice.

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.

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

It comes down to a simple solution, which my agent is pursuing. Contact the sales department and tell them to take this person off their ARC mailing list. They're wasting their money and he's making a bundle.

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?

[editrx.livejournal.com]

Email me who the seller is, please.

(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.)

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

As I said in e-mail, I can only give the ebay user ID--I'm not a member so that's as far as the system will let me go. Guy's in Mpls, if that helps. Anybody a member, who can help editrx out?

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.

[djonn]

I have an eBay account, but can't really add any information about the seller's identity to what's been noted. OTOH, I find it interesting that he's doing a brisk and profitable trade in seemingly new-in-the-box DirectV DVRs (which is to say, TiVO-like recorders) as well as in ARCs.

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.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

Yeah... for purposes of my own, I bid on an ARC a little while back, and then realized the name of the seller was quite familiar as a reviewer. I was glad when I got outbid, as I no longer wanted to line his pockets.

[msagara.livejournal.com]

We see a number of ARCs at the store. We don't sell them and never have; we do recycle them (literally) after use (although some, like, say, new Stevermer & Wrede, will probably be held on to long after the fact by whoever survives the fight for it <wry g>).

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>.

[casacorona.livejournal.com]

All of ours are marked "NOT FOR SALE". What the guy's selling is what we call a bound galley, not an ARC -- ARCs in Tor parlance have four-color covers, and don't say "Not for Sale" on the front, they just say Advance Reading Copy.

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.

[oneminutemonkey.livejournal.com]

Heck, I've been trying to get ARCs from Baen for a while now, since I try to read and review a wide variety of their stuff. :> I'd love to take the share of whatever git is selling his. :>