Lots more responses are pouring in about the legality/validity/temerity of selling advance reader copies, so it seemed like a good idea to share them all with you.

From M.J. Rose:

Sell my ARCs on Ebay, please!!!

Statistically it takes buzz at least eight weeks to build. But - other than bestsellers - a typical book is off the front bookstore shelves only two to four weeks after it's released and after the reviews have started to trickle in (if they come in at all) - which means word of mouth moves slower than booksellers and publishers want to deal with.

A healthy preselling of ARC is one way to get readers talking about a title a few months before it comes out.

There is a preciousness about ARCs that doesn't translate into the lack of preciousness that publishers have about released books. If we are going to remainder hardcovers then lets not worry about the auctioning ARCs. There are lots of systems in publishing that need overhauling, a few dozen or hundred copies going to readers who are fans is not worth worrying about.

Heaven forbid those 200 readers love the book and tell their friends about it! Quel tragedy!

I'd gladly give up royalties on thousands of copies of my books if they were going to be given out to readers two months prior to the true release. I can't think of a better way to get build buzz. Anyone who has ever worked in advertising knows that true sampling is the best way to get attention and build a following.

More responses appear after the jump.

DeAnn Rossetti says:

I have been the recipient of ARCs for review on my blog, and I've also gotten some from a bookstore owner who keeps them in the back of the bookstore for his better clients (and I am certainly one of those). My husband works for both a radio and TV station, and he gets review copies and ARCs by the truckload, mainly because the TV station in particular tosses most of their ARCs in the dumpster, and my husband can't stand to see the waste, so he goes dumpster-diving to retrieve them and bring them home. I've seen him sell ARCs on the internet, and, as I said, I've had more than a few in my possession, and I wouldn't part with them for the world. I usually buy a new copy of the book that I read as an ARC if it was good, and I share my ARCs with fellow book-lovers all the time. The ARCs that my husband has sold were few compared to the full-fledged review copies he's sold that were rescued from the dumpster. Would the publishers rather have seen these brand new books be torn up and turned to pulp than sold and read?

I think publishers aren't really losing out on that much money with their ARCs. I think many people who buy them are like me, and will buy a new copy of the book when it comes out, and keep the ARC as a kind of memento of the early stages of the book. I think that publishers should be glad that people are seeking and reading their books, no matter how they get their mits on them. I buy new when I can afford it and used when I can't, and I know I am not alone in that, as most of my book-loving friends also do this. With the rates of reading and book buying decreasing all the time, I think publishers need to worry more about getting people to read at all, and less about their ARCs.

Then Howard Wertenteil adds:

As a reader, I find anything I can to read, and will not pass up on a perceived bargain such as an "ARC"... given that less than one out of five new authors seems worth my time (never mind my money), every time I get anything 'cheap' (relative term here in NYC) it allows me to be experimental...

if all the books I read were priced at $25 (typical of hardcover) then my purchasing volume would fall off and I would start haunting the library as I used to do in my college days... with paperbacks approaching $9 (at a rate higher than COLA/inflation) this will all too soon be my fallback for every kind of printed matter...

eventually, iPOD-ing -- here's another product name going the way of Xerox and becoming an active action verb -- will hit books the way it has music

thereafter publishers will have nothing to complain about since they will be reduced to the role of media shill, with sales drawn to the marketplace's doorway: the customer

what publishers should be doing is assembling DB's of the customer's interests today while they have something in the way of leverage and something to offer that savvy consumers such as myself are interested... as it is, there are a number of people who have DIY'd or e-published -- not just no-name authors.

Take a look at what happened to New Orleans: 'perfect storm', indifference to maintenance and then a droplet of water knocked a single grain of dirt out of its way... the levies came apart in an incredibly short time once there was a breach... ARC's are a foretaste of what will happen if the publishers fail to recognize that after music, it will be fiction and non-fiction (then followed closely by textbooks) which will become (un)fair game for bootlegging.

Already anyone so inclined could easily do the literate version of 'track ripping' (OCR/scan a book, page by page)... it a question of how interested someone is in hurting the publisher(s)... if ARCs cannot be contained, controlled, what happens when the retail price of a book motivates piracy rather than reading?

For me, I prefer to 'vote with my wallet' for writers I like... the problem is that publishers are not meeting me halfway in the current marketplace. So I guess I'm gonna have to find a way of enlarging the marketplace.