Advance Reading Copies & Other Promotional Books 

09/27/06

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The other day, one of my customers told me he had purchased a book for his inventory and when he got home and entered information about it, he learned that the ISBN was for a hardback instead of the paperback he was holding.  On closer inspection of his book he discovered it was an Advance Reading Copy, which he knew Amazon did not allow him to list. He sent me an email asking if there were other places he could sell this book.

The answer is yes and no.  You can list and sell Advance Reading Copies, Advance Uncorrected Proofs, Advance Reader's Copies, etc., on Alibris if the book is in publication.  Alibris does not allow the sale of these promotional reading copies prior to the release of the actual book for publication.

ABE has the same rules as Amazon.com regarding promotional materials.  I cannot speak to the rules of ebay because the only books (other than my own) that I have ever put on ebay are rare collectibles.

If they made me king for the day, I would say ARC's and other promotional books should be allowed to be sold once the publication is released, but the predominate mega-marketplace thinking is to comply with the wishes of the BIG publishing houses and not allow the sale of anything the publisher did not make any money on in the first place.  In fact, if the BIG publishing houses had their way, there would be no used books sold anywhere because they only make money on new book sales.

There are also some authors that pay to have a number of ARC's made and distributed for publicity reviews.  They do not like to see ARC's sold in lieu of new book copies either.  Personally, I did have some ARC's made of my book and distributed them to a few literate friends and other online booksellers to review for errors, content, and omissions.  If they want to sell these copies, I really don't care, but then again, nobody has ever accused me of having a corporate mentality and I am promoting my book because I like helping people, not to get rich.

Other things I know and could teach people are a lot more difficult to teach via a book, but if anyone thinks I should write a book about operating a lathe, mill, tool grinder, or other metal working machinery, I would be interested and could write a book about it, but these are trades that are better learned by practice.  I could also write a book about flight-testing airplanes from an Instrumentation Engineer's viewpoint, but that would probably just put a lot of people to sleep and not easily learned from a book.  What I am trying to say is that just about everybody can write a book about something, but few write their books for anything more than the income it generates.  I chose to write my book because after teaching undergraduate engineering courses in a university, I have not had the opportunity to teach anything in this depth since, and I like teaching.

There is another author that I have had some correspondence with, Steve Weber, that I think feels about the same as I do about really wanting to teach.  He is a journalism major and could be writing other things for a better income, but he loves online bookselling and teaching others how to do it.  He authored "The Home-based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site.  I personally own a copy of Steve's book and think it is very well written.  I even wrote a review for him on Amazon.com saying so.  I do not think of Steve or his book as being my competition at all, in fact, everyone I have talked with that has read both of our books, think the two are complimentary of each other.

Steve also has a great website and he posts a lot of worthwhile blogs of his own.  I think it would be worthwhile for you to visit his site and read what he has to say about online bookselling too.  His website is:

http://www.online-bookselling.com

If you are interested in learning more about his book, you can visit his product page on Amazon.com if you Click Here.

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