For those of you who aren’t hip to the book community lingo, ARC stands for advanced reading copy.  Basically, before books are published authors send out a certain number of copies to reviewers to generate hype for when the actual release date is.  Bloggers seem to love them, publishers like giving them out to a certain extent and most self-published authors are eager to send them.  But not everyone seems to like them.

From a blogger’s perspective I do like ARCs.  It’s nice to get physical copies in the mail because, hey, free books.  It’s also nice to get ebook ARCs from my favourite self-published authors because it’s very hard to wait until the actual release date for a book you’re excited for.  Some bloggers say they feel pressure to get and review ARCs but personally I’ve never really felt that pressure.  Maybe I just have too much of a “I don’t care what most people think” attitude.

What I want to know now is: If you’re an author, would you say there are substantial benefits to sending out ARCs to bloggers?  What are some of the benefits?  As a book blogger, do you feel pressure to seek out and review ARCs?  Do you like the idea of ARCs in general?