Requesting Physical ARCs | A How-To

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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:

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!

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47 thoughts on “Requesting Physical ARCs | A How-To

  1. I’m pretty new to blogging, and probably won’t start requesting ARCs for a while, but these are really helpful tips! I can’t believe I hadn’t seen your blog before?! Thanks for sending me the link!

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  2. actually i’ve never requested a physical ARC because i don’t live in the US, but i request quite a few of digital ones at Netgalley and Edelweiss, even though i do not get approved on most of them.
    great and helpful post!!

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  3. Great tips! Thank you for sharing. I’ve yet to request any physical ARCs, mostly because I’ve yet to have enough of a desire to read a book in advance to request. But maybe once I’ll caught up on a few series I’ll give it a try. Or maybe I’ll just wait until after my first year 🙂

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  4. This was super helpful! I’ve actually only ever requested through Netgalley or Edelweiss. I’ve never known where to even start with physical copies & I’m too shy hahaha xD But thanks for the tips!

    Molly @ Molly’s Book Nook

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  5. Really helpful post! I’ve only ever requested ARCs on Netgalley and I don’t think I’m going to get into requesting physical ARCs, at least not now, because I have so many books to read already, but if I do, your tips are very helpful.

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  6. Thanks for the tips! I actually have been blogging for around 1.5 years but I never try to request an ARC before since I’m an INTL and my followers aren’t that many so I think I should wait. But maybe someday! 🙂

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  7. Hi,
    I have just found your blog, and it’s pretty cool.
    I am trying to get a bigger number of followers, in order to write more posts and get ARCs 🙂
    Would yo please check my blog and maybe follow me back?

    You can also check the awesome giveaway that I found (8YA SIGNED BOOKS+150$ AMAZON CARD) the link is in a post.
    thank you for your amazing tips.
    BTW: if you’re approved to get an ARC, the publisher would send it to you where ever you live in the world?
    I am from Algeria, contemporary books in English are super hard to be found and super super expansive if found. That’s why i’d like to get ARCs to review.

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    • I’m not sure about international publishers and if they’re willing to send ARCs, but I would definitely talk to international bloggers and see if they acquire ARCs! I also know that eARCs are a lot easier for publishers to distribute and if you’re interested, I have a post on how to get eARCs from Edelweiss, so you can review that way.

      Liked by 1 person

      • I got maybe around 7 ebooks from blogging for books and netgalley, I also got a free ebook when I subscribed to an author’s news letter, I started to get the hang of getting eARCs.
        The problem is that I am all day on my iPad and PC, I get so tired at the end of the day. And my parents are all day: you’re gonna become bliiiiiiind, put that tablet down 😂
        That’s why I really want to get some paperbacks.
        I have the biggest facebook page about books on the Algerian Facebook, thanks to it I can reach a big audience. So, please if you know publishers who are willing to send me even one book, give me their email.
        I will keep reading and reviewing no matter what. But if the process can be a bit more fun and I get to collect some books, that would be even more awesome.
        Thank you for replying to my comment.

        Like

  8. I haven’t requested ARCs before, mostly because I just started my blog boundtowriting.com. I am glad that you posted these tips and I will be using them for future reference when I am ready to start requesting ARCs.

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