About the Footnote Mysteries ARC team
An ARC reader — ARC stands for advance reader copy — is someone who reads a book before it is published and, having read it, leaves an honest review. It is an old arrangement, really: the writer lends the work early, and the reader lends their candour in return.
For a series still finding its readers, that candour matters more than most people suppose. New books are easy to overlook. A handful of considered reviews, posted in the first days after a book appears, is often the difference between a novel that is found and one that quietly is not. I would rather be found by readers who mean what they say.
So let me say plainly what I do not ask. I do not ask for five stars. I do not ask for praise, or for reviews written to a brief. An honest two stars, clearly reasoned, is worth a great deal more to me — and to the next reader standing at the first page, deciding whether to begin — than politeness could ever be.
What you receive: to begin, The Empress's Wake — the novel that opens the series — and thereafter each new Footnote Mystery as a complete advance copy, sent before publication as the series grows. What I ask in return: an honest review on Amazon within a fortnight of finishing each one. The commitment is light. One email per book, when there is a book — no announcements, no urgency, nothing else to clutter the inbox.
If that sounds like your kind of correspondence, the door is open.