My publisher originally limited me to a dozen e-(Advance Reader Copies) ARCs for the giveaway later this month due to concerns about people uploading to pirating sites and therefore making no profit.

[I only did 12 printed ARCs for the giveaway ending today because I was going to pay out of pocket anyway and that’s all I could manage.]

If you’ve read my updates, you’ll know my publisher unfortunately passed away, which has left me adrift. I’ll self-publish unless a miracle happens and another small, reputable publisher swoops in and says they’ll publish ASAP.

That aside, the conventional wisdom with ARCs is to send out around 100 with the assumption that about 10% of readers might actually review. I already trusted that the winners wouldn’t put the ARCs through AI because being anti-AI is a huge draw for a lot of us here.

My questions for you Boundlings are the following:

1. If I ask Lucy and Jennifer to up the 12 winners to somewhere between 20 and 100, can I trust you all to not upload it to pirating sites?

Since I plan to self-publish, my editor, cover artist, and I will be the ones who’ll lose out if my book gets heavily distributed before I even get my book rights back. I didn’t write this book to make money, but book sales would help me fund the rest of the series. Grey (the cover artist) and my editor already agreed to do the whole trilogy and while MY THORNS FOR YOUR ROSES can stand alone, I’d love to keep this series going.

[For those worried about MTFYR not being available where they live, I’m going to use Draft2Digital to self-pub, which distributes pretty widely across the globe.]

2. What format do readers prefer: PDF or epub? What are the pros and cons for you?

Thanks for your patience and I appreciate the feedback. I didn’t expect to be doing all this without a publisher, but I’m doing my best to adapt and extend my reach to potential readers.

This is the last day for physical ARC giveaway, so if you are a US reader, don’t miss out!

The book that you almost are 100% positive you will enjoy, but for some reason or another haven’t gotten to yet.

I for one am almost positive I will love My Heart is a Chainsaw but anytime that i have gotten a chance to try it or pick it up… I always find a different book or a different thing to do.

Like many on Pagebound, I am staunchly anti-AI, for all the reasons we know about.

I have been very engaged with learning about authors who may use this and eliminating them from my TBR.

I am also a publishing person by trade, and have studied the evolution of the English language, as well as my decade experience of copyediting and working with the written word.

There is a scary intersection, in my opinion, where readers are now throwing around accusations of AI usage in books that "sound like AI." I admit, I am a skeptic, and am hesitant to believe anything is real anymore. But I do think it's alarming that anyone can accuse a writer of AI, even if they haven't ever used it, because of their use of em dashes (em dashes till I die!!!) or style of language used. It's something I've been thinking about more and more, and I don't really have a thesis to this post other than to start a discussion that perhaps there should be some more nuance or careful approach when claiming a book is AI.

(This post was inspired by my seeing someone post in a forum that "this book sounds AI" when I, in fact, worked on it pre-publication process, and know for a fact it isn't.)

(And I even hesitate writing this, because I'm SO anti-AI, and I want the whole system to crumble! But I also don't want legit writers to be taken down in the process.)

Because it shows in my feed as "started reading" when it should be "continued reading." Is this fixable? Can I deactivate paused book continuations to show?

I got selected for my second ever ARC (and my first trad publish ARC) this week and it made me feel SO warm inside! There’s such a special feeling to it.

I have been asked to wait until a specific date to release my review, so I’m going to keep my own ARC title hush hush, but I would love to hear your stories about getting selected for ARCS! How did you feel? Was it a random choice or an author you adore? Do you have the physical copy with that special lil legal text on the top? Tell me everything!