Re: Review copies

**"bbmackey" b*@prodigy.net**

As a sender of garden book review copies, and having a small budget, I have
enjoyed sending review copies and have not seen any egregious abuses. I've
gotten a lot of coverage that I wouldn't have had any other way to get, and
if you do book reviews I am always happy to provide review copies.

If I send someone a review copy, requested or not, I do not feel that it
obligates him or her to write about it. If it was requested, the recipient
should at least look through the book, if not read it. If it gets a full
review, great. If it eventually is mentioned in a bibliography of another
book, that's great too. If the writer writes about the subject without
mentioning the book, even that can be helpful in getting readers interested
in my book.

I have had a few cases where writers paid for the free book because the
publication they work for does not allow them to take gifts and samples. I
do not feel that this is necessary -- review copies should be free because
it is how word of their existence is spread.

I have a few horror stories but they are from the bookstore and book
distributor crowd.

One year I gave out about twenty copies of a garden book for Florida
newcomers to bookstores as review copies, at a big book buyer exhibition. I
had not marked them as remainders or samples because I wanted the stores to
sell them and see for themselves that they were in demand. Shortly
afterward, ten of these came back as returns from a big distributor, for
which I was charged the book price and postage by the distributor (who had
bought other books but only when there was a buyer lined up). Yes, the
bookstores getting the freebies had thrown them into their return bin in
order to get credit and lower their own payments to the distributor they
purchase from. They did not have to prove that they had first bought the
book!

No garden writer has ever returned a free book and asked for money back!

Another time I sent two cartons of books to an author. These books were so
new that they did not yet exist in the market anywhere -- it was only a day
or so after the printer delivered them to me. Not long after, they were
being sold on Amazon.com for a fraction of the list price (under the "I have
one to sell" program), and not by the author. I emailed the seller, a book
dealer in California, wondering how he had gotten hold of this book. I
thought I knew where all the copies were, and they had not gone to him.

This person was nice enough to explain that he had gotten them at a post
office "unclaimed freight." One carton had gotten damaged and lost in the
mail and somehow ended up in his hands -- that's how he gets books for his
business and doesn't even know what's in the cartons when he bids on them.
Well, it wasn't anyone's fault, just one of those things.

Best wishes, everyone!

Betty Mackey, Publisher
B. B. Mackey Books
P. O. Box 475
Wayne, PA 19087
bbmackey@prodigy.net
www.mackeybooks.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Clost" <dan.clost@sympatico.ca>
,
> Another question: how often is this abused? Are there folks out there who
> use this as a means to fill their personal library?
> Dan

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