hi!! not sure if this is the best place to ask, but what's with all of the drama surrounding arc readers? i saw a video earlier today talking about how there was soooo much arc reader drama that authors and publishers might not want to keep doing them??? as someone who wants to publish one day, this is seems like a pretty big deal (at least, imo).
self-published author here and i have not heard of this issue... but i would suspect if it's real at all, it has to do with arc reader scams. this would be either unscrupulous "readers" who mass accept books and then leave a single star and bolt, or ai-written reviews from "arc readers," many of who are covertly looking to pirate and distribute titles.
neither of these are reasons to stop using arc readers. scams are as old as human history and they are to be expected (and oftentimes ignored) as part of the business. the good news is that readers are not going to go "oh i found an ai review that must mean every review is fake!" because that's something beyond the author's control--barring of course those desperate authors who pay for positive "reviews" to bulk up their ranking, which is NOT what an arc is!
I am a huge book lover but have never heard the word arc, sorry? What is that?
@furby an "arc" is an "advanced reader copy" which is given out to a select few readers so they can read and review the book before it's officially published :)
Oh, I see!!! I remember having seen it mentioned before in a youtube video about booktok, where this one booktokker proudly claimed about how she would apply to be a reader for those, and she would ai generate reviews for them in order to be paid per review.
@furby omg what??? that's crazy :0 i guess that does help answer my question, tho ToT
@furby that's a MEGA dangerous game for both the ai jerk and the author because you are NEVER supposed to pay ARC readers. ANY reviews for pay are against the TOS of amazon and you can get banned BASED ON YOUR SSN so you can NEVER have another author account with amazon again. EVER.
you are allowed to pay for arc services which will push your book to more readers (basically advertising that you have the arc up) but paying for reviews is a no-no... offering money incentivizes positive reviews by people who haven't read the book because they want to get paid. it used to be people would write generic fast reviews like "loved this story! couldn't put it down. five stars and can't wait to read the next one!" nowadays people run the book through ai to make it look more legitimate by including elements from the actual book, but the scam is the same... butter the author up for cash.
it sounds like the arc drama is between scammers scamming scammers, so i'm laughing instead of being worried
I do ARC reads and I haven't heard of this drama? The only drama I ever see is how publishers decide who to pick on NetGalley lol
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