An ARC—advance reader copy, sometimes called an advance review copy—is a pre-publication edition of your book sent out before launch day. It has always done two jobs at once: winning a blurb for the cover, and seeding honest reviews the moment your book goes live.
What an ARC is actually for
Publishers have sent early copies to critics and booksellers since the days of traveling sales reps showing off galleys before a book existed on shelves. The goal never changed: get people with influence—a critic, a bestselling author in your genre, an early reader—to form an opinion before the public can, so that opinion is ready to work for you on day one.
Today “ARC” covers two related but distinct practices, and it’s worth keeping them separate in your head, because they run on different timelines and different rules.
The five-step shape of an ARC program
- Lock your release date and your files. You need a finished, proofread manuscript and a hard release date before you recruit anyone. Reviewers reading a book with typos or a moving deadline is the fastest way to burn goodwill you’ll want again for your next book.
- Split your list into two tiers. A short, hand-picked list for blurbs (critics, comparable authors, trade reviewers), and a wider list for reader reviews (your newsletter, street team, and any reader recruited through a directory or plugin). Different pitch, different timeline, different ask.
- Send early, and set an expectation. Blurb requests typically go out 3–4 months ahead, since critics and authors are booked out. Reader ARCs typically go out 4–8 weeks ahead, timed so reviews land in the first days after launch rather than trickling in over months.
- Follow up—without pressuring. A single polite reminder close to your deadline is normal practice. What crosses the line is asking someone to raise a rating, edit a review, or hold off on posting something honest but unflattering.
- Put the results to work. Blurbs go on the cover, back matter, and your Amazon Editorial Reviews section. Reader reviews compound—the volume and freshness of reviews in your first weeks is one of the stronger signals retail algorithms use to decide who else gets shown your book.
Getting the blurb: the traditional ask
A cover blurb is a favor with a shelf life, so treat the ask like one. Build a short list of people whose readers overlap with yours—an author who writes in your genre, a critic at a trade outlet that covers it, a podcaster whose audience already buys books like yours. Reach out early, keep the ask small, and give them an easy out.
If they say yes and enjoy the book, ask directly: “Would you be open to a line I could quote on the cover?” Give them the freedom to write whatever’s true — an editor can always trim a long quote down to the punchy fragment that fits a cover band.
Once you have a usable quote, it belongs in three places: the cover itself, the “Editorial Reviews” field when you set up your listing on Amazon and other retailers, and your press kit or media page for anyone writing about the book later.
Getting the reviews: the platform ask
This is the part that actually feeds the algorithm—a cluster of genuine reviews appearing in your first week or two of sales, which most retail platforms treat as a strong early signal. It’s also the part with the most rules, because review manipulation is exactly what platforms police hardest. Amazon’s Community Guidelines are explicit that it’s fine to review a free advance copy—the line is what you can ask for in return.
Reviewers who took a free copy should say so. A short disclosure line at the top or bottom of the review satisfies both platform policy and FTC endorsement guidance:
I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Beyond that one disclosure, the review has to be theirs—good, bad, or mixed. Programs that guarantee only glowing reviews, or that quietly filter out reviewers likely to leave a low rating, are the pattern platforms actively look for, and it’s the fastest way to get reviews pulled or a listing flagged.
Where a plugin like this one fits
The traditional blurb ask is still a relationship you run by hand—an email, a follow-up, a thank-you. The reader-review side is the part that scales, and it’s also the part most authors default to running out of a Google Sheet: a tab of names, a column for “sent,” a column for “reviewed,” and a lot of manual copy-pasting in between. It works for a handful of readers. It falls apart around the same size where it would actually start moving the needle.
| TASK | GOOGLE SHEET | ARC PLUGIN |
|---|---|---|
| TASK | GOOGLE SHEET | ARC PLUGIN |
| Verifying a reviewer is real | You take their word for it | Login with Amazon confirms a real profile |
| Screening out chronic non-reviewers | No way to know their track record | Signup-to-review ratio checked automatically |
| Delivering the file | Emailed link or attachment—easy to reshare | Tokenized per-reader download, not a shareable URL |
| Follow-up reminders | You remember to email everyone, manually | Weekly reminders sent automatically until confirmed |
| Finding new reviewers | Limited to people you already know | Listed on a directory of readers actively looking |
| Who owns the data | You do, in your own Drive | You do, in your own WordPress database |
A spreadsheet is a fine place to start when you’re sending five copies to people you already know. The moment you’re recruiting strangers, tracking dozens of reviewers, or running a second ARC for your next book, the manual version of this—verifying who’s real, remembering who’s still owed a reminder, reissuing a link someone lost—is exactly the busywork a plugin exists to remove, so your own attention stays on the emails that need a human: the ones to critics and fellow authors.
Run the reader side on your own site
The ARC plugin handles verified sign-ups, secure downloads, and automated follow-ups—so your list stays yours.
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Review and endorsement rules vary by platform and can change—check Amazon’s Community Guidelines and the FTC’s endorsement disclosure rules before running a large program.