Getting early reviews without breaking a rule
An ARC is an advance review copy: your finished book, sent free to readers before release so that some of them post about it when it goes on sale.
It exists because of a timing problem. A launch is largely decided in its first week — that is when a store's ranking, its recommendations and your own announcements all point at the book at once — and a book with no reviews in that week has nothing for a browsing reader to lean on.
So you give the book away early to buy visibility later. That is the whole mechanism, and it is entirely legitimate. What gets authors in trouble is the part around it.
Who gets one
Reviewers who read your genre. One blogger who reviews cozy mysteries is worth thirty people who read anything. Reviews from outside your genre tend to be lukewarm in a way that actively hurts you, because the reader was never the audience.
A street team. A small group of readers who like your work and have agreed to talk about the new one. If you have a previous book, these people already exist in your inbox.
Librarians and booksellers. Not for the review — for the order. They read ahead of time by habit, and a single library that stocks you reaches readers you will never meet.
Newsletter subscribers who asked. The highest-converting group there is, because they raised their hand. Ask for volunteers a month or two out.
Twenty engaged readers will do more than two hundred strangers. This is not a numbers exercise.
The rules that actually matter
You may give the book away. A free copy is not payment for a review, and every store's guidelines say so. This is the foundation the whole practice sits on.
You may not pay for a review, or trade anything of value for one. Not money, not a gift card, not a giveaway entry that requires a review, not a reciprocal review of their book. Any of these makes the review compensated, which is against store policy and, in many places, the law. It can get the review removed, your account flagged, or both.
Do not ask for a specific rating. Ask for an honest review. If you ask for a good one you have conditioned the review, and it stops being a review.
Personal connections get removed. Most stores strip reviews from family, close friends, co-authors and anyone they can link to you — shared address, shared device, shared payment method. Your mother's five stars is not a small harmless thing; it is the review most likely to be detected and pulled.
Saying it came from an advance copy is fine. "I received an advance copy in exchange for an honest review" is the standard disclosure and it is welcome everywhere. It is honest, it is what reviewers are expected to write, and it does not weaken the review.
In the tools. The ARC Watermarker personalizes a copy for each reviewer, so every file is traceable to the person it was sent to. Start a book → · about the tools
Timing: weeks, not days
Reviewers need to read the book. A novel is several evenings of someone's life, and the people worth sending to have a queue.
Send ARCs four to eight weeks before release. Two weeks is tight. Three days is an insult dressed as an opportunity, and the good reviewers will simply decline.
Then ask for the review on release day, not at the moment you send the file. A review often cannot be posted before the book is on sale, and the reminder is what converts a reader who finished three weeks ago and moved on. One polite nudge on launch day, and one a week later, is the whole campaign.
The craft of sending
Send the format they asked for. EPUB for most, PDF for anyone who wants the print layout, a physical copy for a reviewer or bookseller who requires one. Sending a format someone cannot open reliably produces silence, not a review.
Watermark every copy. Personalize each file with the recipient's name so a copy that turns up on a pirate site can be traced back to who leaked it. Reviewers know this is normal. It also quietly discourages forwarding.
Track who downloaded. Knowing which files were opened tells you who to remind and who was never really interested.
Expect most of them not to post. A minority of recipients ever leave a review — that is normal, not a failure of your book or your list. Plan the size of your send around it and do not take the silence personally.
What to avoid
Unsolicited bulk email. Scraping addresses and mailing strangers your book is spam, it will get your sending domain blocked, and it converts at approximately zero.
Review swap groups. "I'll review yours if you review mine" is the exact thing the rules prohibit, and it is easy for a store to detect at scale because the accounts point at each other.
Anyone selling reviews. Services promising a number of reviews for a fee are violating store policy on your behalf, and the consequences land on your book, not theirs. Removal of the reviews is the mild outcome.
In the tools. ARC Delivery is a separate service on this site: we email each reviewer their own watermarked copy and show you who downloaded it. A campaign takes up to 25 reviewers, and the files and recipient list are deleted 30 days after the campaign is created, when the download links stop working. Start a book → · about the tools
Make yours
Everything here is built into the tools, and they are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Back to: Mockups: showing a book that does not exist yet · Also useful: How to write a book blurb · EPUB that passes validation · about the Interior Formatter