Requesting Physical ARCs | A How-To

Hi everyone!

I’ve been blogging for almost a year (my blogoversary celebration + giveaways is coming up soon! 😉 ). During this period of time, I’ve gotten a few ARCs and picked up several tips on how to acquire them. I wouldn’t call myself an expert in physical ARCs or anything, but as a newbie blogger, I have gotten approved for a few, so I wanted to share with you a little how-to. 

To start off, you will need to pick a book and think carefully about your plan. I usually ask myself a few questions before I request an ARC. Do I really want to read this book? Do I have enough time to read and review this title? I would personally make sure the answers to those two questions are yes‘s.  Make sure that you are aware that ARCs are used for publicity and it’s not fair to say that you deserve a certain book because frankly, their main purpose are to be used as promotional materials. Make sure you have your priorities straight!

Then, locate a publicity department’s contact information to which you can send an email.You can find the publisher of a book on its Goodreads page! Usually, to locate contact information, I Google “[publisher] publicity contact”. If you are a young adult book blog, like me, make sure you go under “Children’s Publicity” or something else along those lines.

Here are a few publicity emails to get you started:

• Bloomsbury:childrenspublicityusa@bloomsbury.com
• Scholastic: tradepublicity@scholastic.com
• St. Martins Griffin: publicity@stmartins.com
• Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: childrens_publicity@hmhpub.com

Now to compose the email, here’s a few things I include in my emails:

• Introduce yourself! Say your name, the name of your blog & a link, what book you want to request. I usually toss in the ISBN and publication date for good measure.
• Why do you want to read and review this title? Have you read this author’s previous books? If so, you might want to include a link to a review of that book. Let the publisher know why you are interested in it!
• Will you publish this review on your blog? Are you going to publicize it on social media? Let them know!
• Next, I list a few of my stats, including (but not limited to): monthly page views, Twitter followers, Instagram followers, Tumblr followers, blog followers.
• Finally, I say this in all of my emails: “I understand if I’m not who you’re looking for to review any books, but just in case, my mailing address is…” I suggest including your mailing address at the end of the email because not everyone has time to reply back to you and give you a definite answer for whether you get approved for that ARC or not. Publishers get hundreds of emails a day so it would just be easier for the publicist to have your address handy.

If you don’t get approved for an ARC, don’t worry! Don’t give up! Continue building up your audience and your stats, and you’ll get there! 🙂 If you want, you can also request digital ARCs on Netgalley or Edelweiss. I personally prefer the latter, and I also have a tutorial and tips on Edelweiss here.

Graphic Illustration: Credit

I hope those tips help! If you have any questions, please don’t be hesitant to reach out. Comment below with any questions or anything you’d like me to add!