How I found ARC readers for free (well, mostly)
I’ll be honest: finding ARC readers was the part of launching my debut that scared me most. I understood editing, I could figure out formatting, but “go and find dozens of strangers willing to read your book early and review it” felt like being asked to summon a crowd out of thin air. I had no idea where to start.
A few weeks later I’ve got a lovely group of early readers, and the whole thing feels far less impossible than it did. So here’s exactly where I found them, what worked, what didn’t, and what I’d tell past-me who was staring at a blank sign-up form wondering if anyone would come.
What’s an ARC reader (and how they differ from betas)
ARC stands for Advance Reader Copy. ARC readers get your finished book free, a few weeks before launch, in exchange for an honest review posted around release day. That timing is the whole point: reviews that land right at launch give your book early social proof when it needs it most.
Worth clearing up, because people muddle them: beta readers read an unfinished draft and give you feedback to change things; ARC readers read the final book and leave reviews. Betas help you make the book better; ARC readers help you launch it. Different job, different stage, different people.
Start earlier than you think
The one logistical thing I’d flag before anything else: give yourself 4–6 weeks between sending ARCs and launch day. People need time to actually read the book and write the review, and life gets in the way. Start recruiting too late and you’ll be chasing reviews that trickle in weeks after launch, when they’re worth far less. I nearly made this mistake.
Where I actually found them
I tried a scattering of things. Here’s the honest verdict on each.
Reddit. Honestly? I got nothing here — but I think that’s on me, not on Reddit. There’s a dedicated subreddit, r/ARCReaders, full of readers actively looking for early copies, so the audience is right there. My mistake, I suspect, was the format: I made a text post with the image attached underneath, which scrolls past looking like a wall of words. What I’d do next time is lead with an eye-catching graphic as the post, with the details in the caption — something that actually stops the thumb. So: worth trying, but make it visual.
Goodreads groups. I want to be straight with you: I can’t vouch for this one from experience, because I hit a genuinely maddening bug. Every time I published my post to a group, Goodreads would just… remove it. I contacted their support, they told me to clear my cache, that didn’t fix it, and I never got to the bottom of what was causing it. So I’ve got no results of my own to report. But — several author friends swear Goodreads has been brilliant for them, so I’m not writing it off, and if it works for you it’s free. The groups worth a look: Advanced Copies for Review & Book Giveaways (big and active, with genre-specific threads), ARC Of Authors, or browse all the ARC groups here.
Booksprout. Booksprout lists your book in its catalogue so its reader base can find it. In my case, the sign-ups from Booksprout’s own discovery were low — my book was one of many in a long list, and it didn’t pull much on its own. (I’ve got more thoughts on Booksprout as a tool for running the campaign in the next post — that’s a separate question from whether its readers find you.)
A £10 (~$13) Instagram ad. This was my surprise winner. I put a tiny £10 (~$13) boost behind a “wanted: ARC readers” post pointing to a sign-up form, and it brought in around 60 sign-ups. Sixty readers for a tenner felt like a genuinely good trade — better value, honestly, than some of the paid tools I was already using. Your results will vary with your genre and creative, and I wouldn’t sink a fortune into it, but as a small, targeted spend it massively outperformed what I expected.
Personal outreach. Last, and slowest, but the best readers came this way: I reached out directly to a handful of bookstagrammers whose reviews I already loved, and asked — politely, no pressure — if they’d like an early copy. The response rate was lovely, and these readers were the most engaged of the lot because they already read in my genre. It doesn’t scale, but a few warm DMs to the right people beat a hundred cold sign-ups.
What it cost, what it got me
Rough numbers from my own campaign — yours will differ, but this is the shape of it:
| Channel | What it cost | Readers it brought | Worth it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reddit (r/ARCReaders) | Free | None — but I posted it badly | Maybe — make it visual |
| Goodreads groups | Free | Couldn’t test (a bug ate my posts) | Others rate it highly |
| Booksprout (discovery) | Monthly sub | Very few | Not for finding readers |
| £10 Instagram ad | £10 (~$13) | ~60 sign-ups | ★ Best value by far |
| Direct outreach | Free (time) | Small, but the best readers | Yes — highest quality |
The takeaway: one tiny ad did nearly all the heavy lifting, a few personal messages brought the readers I trust most, and the “free” channels were a mix of my own fumbles and bad luck. Don’t bet on a single source — but if I could only keep one, it’d be that £10 (~$13) ad.
How many should you aim for?
There’s no magic number, but the rough consensus for a debut is a team of 20–50 ARC readers (established authors often run 100+). The reason you aim higher than your review goal is the drop-off, which is bigger than anyone expects: plan for only 20–40% to actually leave a review. So if you want 20 reviews at launch, you want a team closer to 50.
My own numbers back this up almost exactly: I had around 60 sign-ups, and about 10 reviews in the first three to four weeks. More will trickle in — reviews don’t all land on launch day — but I’d genuinely plan for fewer than half of your readers to come through, and treat anything above that as a happy surprise. It’s not you. Readers get busy, life happens, and some just forget. Recruit generously and you’ll be fine.
Setting all this up took me the better part of a weekend, plus a slow drip of outreach over the following couple of weeks. Not hard, exactly — just more fiddly and more admin than I expected, which is a theme I keep running into with self-publishing.
The honest ending: I started completely lost, and the responses I’ve had since have been so much warmer than I feared. Watching sign-ups come in has made the countdown to launch feel a little less daunting and a lot more real. Finding the readers is only half of it, though — the other half is running the campaign without losing your mind: which tools I used to deliver the book, keep track of everyone, and chase reviews. That’s next.