I just sent out my very ARC to my very first group of pre-readers.

For those of you not in the know, (I didn’t know the acronym until a couple months ago myself), thats the ‘Advance Reader Copy’ writers and publishers send out to pre-readers before the book is officially available, to get feedback for corrections or prepare readers who can then also write reviews as soon as the book is launched online.

I had desperately wanted to have this email sent before my second son was born, as I knew there would be a couple weeks of lag when I would be fairly unavailable (simply exhausted), and wanted them to have the time to start in on the book. But I had issues converting to a MOBI file (the format used for Kindle devices) and obviously that’s fairly requisite for readers these days.

I did have two weeks of lag after my second son was born, but then I spent probably a week getting the MOBI document to a place where I was satisfied. So today, I finally sent out the MailChimp email with a link to download the book for my very first pre-readers. It felt monumental. I think this first time there were 25 on my ARC list. Hopefully next time I do this I’ll have built that up even further, but I’m proud to have this group of people who I think are actually mostly all really excited to read the book and help me launch.

It is a bit nerve wracking. My sister has read the original copy (ach, what a mess that was!), and my editor has read it … multiple … times. But, no one else has read it in full. Two other friends have read a couple first chapters. This is my first time throwing it to anyone beyond just a single selected person.

We’ll see how it goes!