David*Macinnis*Gill.com

I knew it was bound to hap­pen. A Google alert let clued me into an Ebay mer­chant sell­ing a copy of an ARC of Soul Enchi­lada. ARCs are pro­vided free by pub­lish­ers as review copies for book­stores, review­ers, and other gate­keep­ers. They aren’t meant to be sold. In fact, most of them are clearly labeled that the book is not for sale. It is also not the final ver­sion of the text. Soul Enchi­lada has been edited twice since gal­leys went out, so if any­one buys it, they will have less per­fected version. 

I have no prob­lem with read­ers shar­ing gal­leys by pass­ing them around, swap­ping them, giv­ing them to a den­tal assis­tant (which is what I did with Gra­ham Salisbury’s lat­est). In fact, I hope that has hap­pened with Soul Enchi­lada because it’s the best way I know for a book to find its audi­ence early on.

Sell­ing ARCs on Ebay is a dif­fer­ent story. I tagged the item, but I doubt that Ebay will do any­thing about it. They seem to look the other way in cases like this.