So, some of you may have heard of this stellar program that started not too long ago; ARCycling. It is a program for bloggers, librarians and teachers can request, trade and also recycle ARCs. One of my super-intelligent pals came up with this idea as a way to share the love and get the word out about fabulous books and their even more fabulous creators. So now I would like to introduce you to the super-groovy Jennifer.
ARCycling is a program for bloggers to give back the publishers that
give to us. And since it’s not easy to send them cookie bouquets, we’re giving
them continued promotion of their expensive ARCs by passing them on to other
bloggers, teachers, librarians, and press outlets.
The idea
was created in my little head from a combination of other ideas.The first was
that I am very strict on the books (ARCs or otherwise) I keep. Why? Because I
don’t have a space and for me, why keep a book I know I’m never going to look at
again. While that’s great and all, it leaves a lot of books that I don’t always know what to do with. I’ve
donated many to certain causes,
but would you believe that they can get filled? They can! Secondly, was the
whole #ARCgate situation that I watched
from afar on Twitter. Summary: two girls excitedly taped their “haul”,
displaying two copies of everything they
grabbed after the American Library Association conference in June 2012. Drama
started (of course) and I impassively watched, thinking that bloggers were getting such a bad name from greed
like this. The spark happened when I was reading a literary agent’s tweets on
the matter and she pointed out publishers are investing a lot of money in ARCs
and promotional materials and when people
blindly grab books and they don’t even know what they are, they are not getting
their investment back. Okay, so I was a Creative Writing major and film minor
in college, but I know just enough about business to understand that.
And that was when I
had the epiphany.
What if there was a recycling program for
ARCs? What if bloggers shared with other bloggers books that they had read and
decided not to keep? What if instead of
just giving them away to the public, they gave them to bloggers and librarians
for the sole purpose to continue promotion, thus giving back to the publisher
and upping their return investment? And unlike trades that usually require you to have one of
the most coveted books of the season or a book tour where you wait three weeks
and then have like, an hour to read
the book and mail it on, it’s a gifting. And then it all exploded. In a good way. What started as a dinky little Google Doc suddenly HAD
to get a bigger platform because even though it was still in its formative
motions, the response I was getting was overwhelming. ARCycling.blogspot.com has been open not even a month with over 100
followers and more donations than I can barely handle in a session of ARCycling.
ARCycling opens once a week. Sunday afternoons (usually after 4
PM CST) the list of all the available ARCs go up and bloggers, librarians,
teachers, press outlets can email me, requesting up to 2 ARCs of their choice.
Then I mail it out! I can’t require them to be reviewed, but I highly encourage
it! People who do this are called
Requesters. After they get 2 books, they are suspended
for 2 weeks after to, you know, divide the wealth up. there are the Donators. They’re my big shiny
superstars. They are the bloggers, teachers, librarians, etc. who freely offer
up ARCs to me, I put them on the list and then they mail them out to whoever. I
appreciate them so much because they are taking the time and
money to prepare and mail the books, getting nothing out of it other than being
praised by me and their blog button going up on my Donator page.
My favorite aspect of my own creation is that
this benefits small, underprivileged bloggers AND librarians. The bloggers who
DON’T have 10 million followers and every contact at each of the Big Six. And
librarians who can’t go to conferences, but want to have knowledge of the up
and coming teen titles. And at the same time it also promotes smaller titles
from smaller publishers that sometimes get overlooked in the blogging world. It
happens. I’ve seen it many, many times. So in
summation, this is a program for the
underdog. And in the famous words of (movie) Seneca Crane, “everyone likes an underdog!”
Jennifer can be reached at any of the links below for further questions or comments.
*The rest of the Giveaway Schedule can be found HERE!*
About an up and coming teenage rocker on the verge of stardom, when the girl next door becomes something more; they're forced to face the harsh realities on his road to fame and the expectations of their friends and family.
Sacrifices are made as everything changes as they know it.
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