ARC On eBay

My friend Sheldon Siegel tells me “you know you’ve hit the big time when your ARCs are being sold on ebay.” It looks like I’ve received that dubious honor.

Sheldon sent me this link, which must hold the record for the world’s longest URL:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ARC-The-Circle-of-Thirteen-by-William-Petrocelli-2013-Paperback-THRILLER/331027390657?_trksid=p2047675.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222002%26algo%3DSIC.FIT%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D17515%26meid%3D1408656839893878645%26pid%3D100011%26prg%3D8141%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D1%26sd%3D331011588106%26

There it is — an Advance Reader’s Copy of The Circle of Thirteen on sale with a “starting bid of $6.99.”

I suppose I should be excited about this. When I glanced at that same page yesterday, I swear the same ARC was being sold for $2.00. Apparently, it has more than tripled in value in the last 24 hours!

But before the bidding frenzy gets any more intense for this supposed treasure, a couple of things need to be pointed out:

• This is just an Advance Reader’s Copy of the book. A few of these were distributed to a small group of booksellers and others so that they can get some idea of what the book was about before the final version went to press. If you look at the picture of the book, you can see that it says “uncorrected proof” right at the bottom. That little phrase means the author might make changes. (Did the author in fact make changes? Oh yeah, the author certainly did!)
• If you could flip the picture over, you would see that the words “Not for resale” are printed on the back. No one is going to send the Fibbies after your for violating that restriction, but it is considered bad form.
• This is a paperback book, while the real book is being published in hardcover. If you buy this, you will be missing things like the author’s picture (well, maybe that’s not such a good selling point).