by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
This is my third post on pre-orders. As you might remember, I wasn’t much of a fan of them when I tried them (over much of 2016).
This time I decided not to run a long-term pre-order.
I didn’t like the pressure of feeling like I was under the gun to deliver. It’s been a while since I wrote for a traditional publisher and maybe I’ve gotten used to my deadlines getting softer.
This time I waited for my book to be finished and then put it up for a very short pre-order while the book was being edited (knowing I had plenty of time to finish my edits before uploading the final version).
I put the book up on both Amazon and Draft2Digital’s retailers (some of which are set-up for pre-orders, some aren’t) on January 2 for a January 17 release. I picked a Tuesday, since a lot of traditionally-published cozies are launched on Tuesdays and many savvy readers have an eye open for releases.
It took a while before I started seeing any sales happening. At first, I had a hard time even finding my book on Amazon. By the 10th, the book was showing at around 50,000 in the best sellers rank, so it was finally being discovered. I’m not sure if Amazon sent any emails to my readers to notify them of the pre-order, but the sales did seem to come at once.
Sales at Draft2Digital retailers, judging from my ranking on the different sites, were also occurring. The D2D dashboard doesn’t reflect pre-order sales but reports them after the release.
Draft2Digital does make the process very easy. You can set pre-orders there without the need to upload a draft (as opposed to Amazon, which doesn’t allow ‘asset-less’ pre-orders). As D2D states: “You can set up pre-orders to nearly all Draft2Digtial store partners as far out as ninety days to a year in advance of your chosen release date. You aren’t even required to have a final manuscript or cover, as long as you upload those things no less than ten days before release. We recommend pre-orders as a way to capture readers’ interest prior to the book’s launch and build up a powerful boost to your sales rank on release day.”
What I did like about the pre-order is the ability to upload everything and then work on getting all the details ironed out….the better-formatted book description, getting the ISBNs worked out, creating a newsletter with active buy-links, deciding on pricing, etc.
Another nice thing was having live links when I finally did announce the release in my newsletter. In the past, I’ve sent newsletters without the print link, since it takes a while longer for printed books to show up live at retailers.
I also like that when the book finally did release, the Amazon page was quickly populated in the ‘customers who bought this also bought’ section, which introduced my book to more readers.
Amazon has a few requirements regarding pre-orders (some of these requirements are new):
There is a minimum amount of time you can schedule a pre-order. So if you were thinking of having a week-long pre-order, that won’t be permitted by Amazon: “Pre-orders must be scheduled 10 or more days (from midnight GMT) before the book is released.”
Pre-orders are available in all Amazon marketplaces (except for India). The books release at midnight in the local time zone.
The deadline for your final version of the manuscript is 3 days before the release. Or, more specifically: “The final version of your manuscript that you want to use for your pre-order eBook must be uploaded and republished at least 3 days before the release date you set, with the last day for upload starting at midnight, GMT. For example, if you were releasing an eBook on September 20, you would need to upload and republish it by 11:59 PM GMT on September 16. To help prevent confusion from time zone to time zone, we’ve added a timer you can follow to see when exactly your book is due. We recommend you use the timer to see the actual deadline.”
For those of us worried that some unforeseen disaster will make our release date impossible, Amazon does now offer an option to reschedule the release. This option is through our KDP bookshelf (click the ellipses under Book Actions). Under ‘Pre-order’, click ‘edit release date.’ Save and submit. Amazon allows this action one time for as much as 30 days past the original launch date.
However, if you cancel the release altogether: “If you choose to cancel the pre-order, you may unpublish your eBook from the Bookshelf. When you unpublish an eBook in pre-order, you will be unable to list any eBook for pre-order for one year.”
This particular go at pre-orders was successful enough (and Amazon’s new flexibility was encouraging enough) for me to plan other short pre-order periods for future releases.
Have you tried out pre-orders? How did it go?
Giving Pre-Orders Another Try: Share on XPhoto via tookapic via Visual Hunt
That means you just had a release this week – congratulations!
On Tuesday. :) I always forget to mention releases here, ha! Maybe I’ll slip something into Sunday’s post. Thanks!
I’ve tried these without much success when I had books with Amazon only. It seemed everyone was waiting for the Kindle Unlimited release. Now that I’m taking books wide as a matter of course, maybe I’ll give it another shot. I do like D2D and that’s just one more facet of their service to like. Thanks for the info!
And they do sell well through D2D–it’s just a little scary when you look at the sales figures and they’re totally flat until after the release (even *knowing* that they didn’t report pre-order sales). But now, several days into the release, they’ve apparently had a good number of retailers report to them and I’ve got nice figures so far.
I’ve done pre-orders for a few of my books. My first book’s pre-orders went well, but I think that was because I had been talking about my books for so darn long that all of my friends/followers rushed to finally be able to read one of my books in real published form. After that? Meh. Of course, I think a lot of that has to do with a lack of advertising, so it’s on me. I did do one as a wide release pre-order through D2D. I made enough money to actually get D2D to release funds (they have a $10 minimum).
Congratulations on your new release! I hope you sell tons! =o)
B.E.–I think an emailed newsletter is supposed to be a best practice for announcing a pre-order…of course, sometimes I choose not to follow best practices. :)
I think the best thing is that I get all my Ts crossed and Is dotted during the pre-order. So when the book *did* launch on Tuesday, I sent out the newsletter with active buylinks for all the formats. That was nice. In the past, I’ve sent out newsletters at release and gotten complaints from some readers that they only buy print and there was no print link. Of course, print takes a few days to get approved and set-up. This seems a better tactic for me.
Congratulations on your release, Elizabeth!! Great news! As for pre-orders…. I found they worked all right for me. The only challenge I had was that those who’d pre-ordered weren’t as likely to be involved in some of the other pre-publication things I was doing. It was a case of ‘get readers interested this way,’ or ‘get them interested that way,’ but not both, if that makes any sense.
Margot–I see what you’re saying. So they weren’t as engaged after they’d purchased the book…I can definitely see how that could happen. This could be a disadvantage to any writer who has a higher visibility release/launch activities.
I only get my books from Books a Million for this series. I have pre ordered with them and they notify me when they are shipped when released. I’ve checked the site and it’s not on there yet. I’ve never ordered from any other site. So I’m still waiting so I can order. I have enjoyed every new adventure.
Mary—Argh! What a pain…so sorry to hear that. That’s the last thing I want since BAM is the bookstore in 2 of the last places I’ve lived in. I see that the print version is in, but not the digital version. I’ll see what I can find out. If you keep having issues, let me know and I’ll send you the book directly. :) Thanks so much for reading!
It’s a shame Amazon doesn’t count all the pre-orders on release day. Most everyone else does. Congrats on your latest book.
Diane–I know…wouldn’t that be nice? I do think it impacted the ranking of the book, which didn’t hit as high on the Amazon algorithm on launch day as the previous book (which wasn’t a pre-order). I think the *sales* numbers are comparable, but not the ranking/visibility. And thanks!
As a reader I love preorders. I like knowing what’s upcoming and being able to keep track of all the different series and authors I read. It also means I won’t forget because on release day it will appear on my Kindle. Amazon did send out an email for your release. A lot of authors send out an email when available for preorder too, rather than just on release day.
Thanks for this, Mella! What do you think about more than one newsletter email regarding a release (one when it’s up for preorder, one when it actually releases)? I’m always worried about spamming my readers. Thanks for letting me know that Amazon sent an email–that’s good to hear!
I like emails from authors, for me it’s why I sign up. Shop emails are the ones that start to drive me insane. Two is good. Really as long as you’re not sending them every day most people will probably be fairly happy. I know some authors send out a monthly newsletter, some quarterly with a bit of everything – sneak peaks, sale info, books they’ve been reading, interesting articles. A few have subscriber only stories, usually novellas or first book free type things. One has her tea of the month, for you it might be gnome of the month or quilt or recipe or etc. Similar to what’s in your books. I love Amazon emails, it’s one of the ways I follow authors releases but to be fair I do spend a ridiculous amount of time on goodreads, Amazons recommendations page and fictfact, not to mention stalking my fav authors on Amazon and coming soon pages. Realistically most people who sign up to your newsletter will be fans and want to stay in the know.
Mella–I’m with you on the retail emails…ugh. I’d love to be able to tweak those sometimes to only hear about major sales, or only hear once a month, etc.
Gnome of the month! How cute would that be? :)
I don’t know about FictFact…I’ll look it up.
Thanks for your insights!
Hi Elizabeth – another interesting post … sorry got to this late. I wanted to read it – even if at the moment it’s not on my horizon … lots of work involved … but obviously worth it – cheers Hilary
Hilary–It can definitely be worth it, but might be a trial and error thing! Hope you’re having a good week. :)