Why ARCs as Status Symbols Are Bad for Business

Once again, Sally Rooney’s new book is causing a stir.

I hadn’t planned on writing another newsletter this week, but I was minding my own business when this piece in Esquire caught my eye. It’s mostly about how the ARC of Sally Rooney’s novel Intermezzo has become a status symbol to influencers.  It also touches on what I want to talk about today: that in creating such demand for one book, the industry diminishes demand for others.

Farrar, Straus & Giroux rightly produced a large quantity of ARCs for Intermezzo. They even numbered them to track who received them and if that person was selling the ARC online. The problems began when numerous influencers requested an ARC via email and never heard back (in the publicity department’s defense, they are probably swamped). That said, having people say a marketing or publicity department was unresponsive is not great. I digress.

The real problem, as I see it, is that an ARC of Intermezzo is seen as a status symbol. Possessing this particular ARC doesn’t make anyone special, but it does make other authors feel worse. I’ve previously written about how big publishers earmark specific books as “big,” so those titles benefit from significant marketing and publicity budgets and campaigns. While I understand why this occurs, I think it harms the industry. It means that the bestseller lists are a forgone conclusion for the books a publisher warrants as worthy of extensive campaigns. What about the authors who have written excellent books but are left hanging because there is nothing in the budget for them? Or, what about books from small publishers that deserve attention but are overlooked because influencers and reviewers feel obligated to highlight big titles? This has been a problem in the industry for some time and must be addressed. It isn’t healthy for book publishing that we can predict which books will land on The New York Times Bestseller list.

I’ve long said publishers shouldn’t acquire books they can’t get behind with a publicity or marketing budget. This remains true, but most of the industry is in a vicious cycle: publishers need to acquire a certain number of books each fiscal year to meet billing requirements set forth by CEOs and CFOs (billing=how many copies they ship to retailers), so all titles will never receive equal support. The idea of books as status symbols does not create an equitable publishing environment. Instead, it reinforces the perception that the book industry is elitist and exclusionary.

I don’t have a solution to put forth just yet, so my message to publishers is this: treat authors fairly, try to treat them equally, and maybe we’ll see some progress.