Those Crazy Odd Mom Arcs

Odd Mom Out won’t even hit the store shelves until September 27th but everyone seems to have a copy already! How is it possible for those advanced reading copies (arcs) to have traveled as far, and as fast as they have?

Well, I’ll tell you.

eBay.

Yep, thanks to eBay and half.com and all those other auction places folks can sell anything, including arcs, which is actually illegal but that doesn’t seem to slow the sales any. One (small) online bookseller had the Odd Mom Out arc priced at $18.99 plus shipping. I wrote that seller and protested. Fine, sell the arc if you must be illegal, but don’t gouge the consumer!

When Odd Mom Out is released late September it’ll be twelve bucks or so, and yes, I’ll earn a little bit which helps me pay my bills so I can keep a house and my kids warm and fed, and yes, my publishers make a bit and all the others involved can pay their bills, too. But the business isn’t just about making money, it’s about making readers happy. It’s about getting fun stories into the right readers hands.

And who are the right readers? Well, that’s you.

If you want to be one of those reading the book early, I’m giving away a copy on my B-Board in the next week. Patricia in Florida won a copy of Odd Mom Out from my Mother’s Day contest. Now I have another contest on my B-Board (www.janeporter.com/board) that ends Tuesday with the winner announced Wednesday, the prize being an arc of Odd Mom. Why am I giving away free copies?

Publicity and buzz. Hopefully if a reader really likes a new book she’l tell her friends and they’ll (hopefully) buy or check it out from the library and I’ll hit the New York Times. (Okay, dreaming here but why not? If I can have nightmares of being chased by a scary man with a butcher knife why can’t I dream something happy and fizzy???).

I’m pleased to tell you the buzz for Odd Mom Out is good so far. Really good. Now, none of the big literary guns have reviewed the book yet and that’s fine with me. My readers and friends have been reading it and giving me their reviews and it’s a two thumbs up, and those are the reviews that mean the most to me. If you loved Flirting with Forty, and you liked Odd Mom Out even better…than I did my job. And I did it good.

And that’s what I take to heart.

I can’t lie. It’d be awesome to take something to the bank as well, but those numbers will have to wait for September.

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