ARC team

What it means

An ARC team is the people you send advance copies to, book after book. You recruit them from your newsletter, your back matter or social media. In return for the early read, they promise an honest review on the sites you name.

A romance author with a long series might keep a team of a hundred readers who review every new release in its first week. A nonfiction author writing about personal finance might keep a smaller team of twenty readers who give feedback on early chapters and review the finished book. A poet might ask ten trusted readers for blurbs and reviews.

Good ARC teams are tended. Authors keep a list, check who actually reviewed, and drop readers who stop.

Why it matters when you sell direct

A team is a list of your most engaged readers. When you sell direct, that list is worth even more: these are the people most likely to buy the special edition, the signed copy or the next box set from you instead of from a retailer.

Keeping the team on your own list, not only inside a service, means you can always reach them.

How Lanternbee handles it

Lanternbee does not send ARC files or track reviews from an ARC team today. You can keep running your team with BookFunnel, StoryOrigin or by email.

What Lanternbee gives you: every buyer lands on your reader list, and you can add tags to readers, such as “ARC team”, and build segments from them. You can send broadcasts to a tag, or connect MailerLite or Klaviyo to keep your email tool in step.