[International Bloggers] What is an ARC? Where do I get them?

Hello! If you all didn’t know, I’m an international blogger (which means I am not based in USA/UK) which ahem kinda sucks. I will probably a list of cons of being an international blogger down there somewhere. I am starting this series which includes guides, posts related to international blogger problem and general blogging guide/help!

You probably always see people saying being an international blogger sucks, but you don’t exactly know why? Well, here are a few of them.

• there are NONE book festivals or huge fairs where you can meet authors you LIKE
• basically impossible to get physical ARCs
• hard to get eARCs
• hard to find english books in your local library/bookstore ( when you are located in a country where english is not the first language)
• hard to find local fellow bloggers who also live around the same area as you
• english books are incredibly expensive
• libraries are out of date
• … bookstores too
• unless the book is super famous wait for a few months till it actually arrive to your local bookstore
• wait for another few months for it to arrive the library

Here is just a short short list of disadvantages of being an international blogger! BUT, some of you who are reading this may not be a blogger, maybe you are a bookstagrammer, booktuber. You just joined the bookish world and wondering what the heck are these people talking about? Are they talking in another language?? Why do people do so many book reviews? Where do they get all those money to buy books?

And most importantly WHAT ARE ARCS?????

• Advanced Reader Copies also known as galley/proofs but most people just called it ARC in short
• they are uncorrected copies of books sent out for review purposes (for YOUR EYES only)
• there are two forms of ARCs : physical or electronically (aka eARCs)

So in this post I’m mainly gonna talk about where to get eARCs and possibly HOW in another post! GOOD NEWS YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A BLOGGER TO GET ARCs. How? *cues drumroll* you can be a reviewer! As long as you have a Goodreads/amazon acc to post reviews you are good to go! In addition to that of course you can post your review on instagram/youtube or other platforms, I’m sure the publisher will be thrilled you did that.

YOU CAN GET EARCS ON NETGALLEY AND EDELWEISS (or blog tours).

I mostly use netgalley because it is incredibly user friendly and you will get eARCs in no time! Don’t be afraid! Set up your account and start reading! As for Edelweiss, I recently started using it a bit more if you don’t know Edelweiss… is comparatively not so user friendly so I would recommend you exploring Netgalley first!

I got over 200 eARCs on my kindle and started getting eARCs before I even start blogging, so don’t be scared GO AHEAD! and no I’m not sponsored by Netgalley pshh I WISH 

Heres an extremely simple guide to types of request on Netgalley:

• wish for a book. Wishing for a book is extremely hard, getting books from wishing it is a miracle I’ve never succeeded in that
• request a book. Requesting a book is the most common way of getting an ARC but it really depends on the book you’re requesting and which publisher. I get approved for about 70-80% of the books I request but some may deny my request because I’m international and the book they’re promoting doesn’t sell in my country!
• a “Read Now” book. You can get a Read now book definitely, everyone can read those

Please don’t worry about being a small blog, I definitely recommend you set up a NG acc right now, trust me I don’t think you will regret it.

Now now onto BLOG TOURS (only for bookstagrammers or bloggers) 

There are a lot of companies out there that host book tours for authors, you can choose what kind of post you’d like to post on your blog, interview,guest post, reviews to post on your day to host.

1. you sign up on their page to be a host
2. normally you wait for their newsletter
3. see a tour you are ACTUALLY INTERESTED
4. sign up in their google form
5. wait for their email (maybe a few days or few weeks depending when is the blog tour)
6. you receive their email
7. check for your hosting day
8. (if you are doing a review post) they send you an eARC!
9. download it to your kindle
10. read it
11. post your review and everything else on the tour kit!

There you go! I’ve seen a few acc for book tours on instagram but for different countries so its not for every country but still some of you might be able to get on a few book tours if their programme included your country!

That’s it for my introduction for this series of posts! What do you think? Anything else to add on to it? I will do a more detailed post on how EXACTLY can you get them. Stay tuned for more!