The Pre-order Machine and What I've Learned about Its Place in Publishing
I knew nothing about pre-orders with most of my published books. It was all part of the publication machine that someone else took care of. In these past years, though, authors are having to educate themselves on all sorts of things to do with publishing books. Whether they go trad or indie, it’s no longer us and them, publisher and author, but a joint effort.
With my recently published novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue, I decided to explore pre-orders. I’d read they were the best way to raise a book’s status in the online rankings, at least on the bookseller sites like Amazon. So when my new novel, Last Bets, went into pre-orders four days ago, I took up residence to see what would happen this time.
Because last time, with A Woman’s Guide, pre-orders put my book into best-seller status within the first week.
But there are a lot of mixed reviews about pre-orders. They require more effort, advance timing, and extra oomph towards promotion. Many authors are gearing up for publication date; they don’t really want to start the engines that much earlier. And originally, pre-orders were set up to only help publishers. Pre-orders indicated the approximate number of copies needed for actual release; knowing these metrics, they could better prepare. Print more, get better rates, focus publicity.
Here’s what I’ve learned: authors also benefit. Pre-orders allow authors that possibility of higher ranking and if you do grab the golden ring, you can use that in publicity for the life of your book.
Here’s the extra effort required: the book must be live for distribution to bookseller sites before it can go into pre-orders. Once a book is uploaded to Ingram or another distributor, it goes through processing then gets released to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop.org, Target, Walmart, or whatever booksellers will carry it. On those sites, the book will be shown with its cover, back cover, description, author bio, and any reviews or other metadata. There will be a release date and information on how to pre-order. Here’s how my new novel looks on its Amazon pre-order page.
The orange button on the right says Pre-order now. It shows the option of ebook or print book. When the audiobook becomes available in a month or so, it’ll appear as well.
Within the last year, the pre-order system has changed a lot. It used to be that pre-orders were banked on Amazon until publication day. If a publisher started early enough—and some books go into pre-orders nine months ahead of pub date—the accumulated total could definitely shoot a book to best-seller status. Last year, as I understand it, Amazon changed that policy. Pre-orders are now only counted when they are placed.
Not to worry. If you focus your publicity efforts, there’s still a chance that pre-orders will raise your rank. This happened to me, without my actually knowing it, when A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue went into pre-orders last August.
If enough people pre-order on Amazon within a certain time period, the book can indeed become a bestseller in different categories and even a Hot New Release, which means more attention and the lovely ability to say your book is a bestseller. As one of my New York Times-bestselling author friends said, You don’t want to underplay this. It’s quite a feather.
I didn’t expect A Woman’s Guide would achieve either best-seller or Hot New Release status, but a miracle happened. I hired Suzy’s Approved blogger tours for the weekend my novel went into pre-orders. She arranged for eighteen Instagram book bloggers (bookstagrammers) to release the cover image of A Woman’s Guide to their followers. Some of the bloggers had many thousands of followers; one had 54,000 as I remember. They just posted the cover and a description, and I sent them the pre-order link.
I also used that same weekend to email my close circle of friends and family about my pre-order campaign, as well as post it here in my newsletter.
Somehow, all this effort brought enough pre-orders to send my book into three bestseller categories on Amazon. It rose to #3 in Sibling Fiction and high up in the two other categories.
My NYT friend emailed me: Did you know you were a bestseller today? I hadn’t looked (the listing changes hourly or more often, so you have to catch it). Then she sent another message: You’re also a Hot New Release. No way.
But yes, the novel’s little cover image appeared in a box that said Hot New Releases. The audiobook of A Woman’s Guide stayed there for several months, to my shock.
What pre-orders require
As I mentioned above, when you set up pre-orders, the book has to be uploaded to the distributor and in ready shape for publishing—but here’s the interesting fact. No publishing actually happens until release date. So you have time, say, to make changes if they are absolutely necessary (they involve the editor, typesetting, proofreader, and possibly cover designer’s time, which means money).
In my case, several factual errors came to light during those months between pre-order and the release date of A Woman’s Guide. My volunteer launch team, with their eagle eyes, was reading the advance copy and three of them caught errors. Two times, there was an error in continuity that nobody had noticed. A gun placed in a certain pocket of Red’s backpack with her logbook, for instance, but the logbook isn’t found until a few chapters later. Or cargo pants suddenly having a “jeans pocket.” This is small stuff, but it’s not right, and I worked too many decades as an editor myself to tolerate these kinds of mistakes. I wanted to be pleased with and proud of the book for many years. We also found a weird typo: a whole word dropped out of a sentence between final proof and the galley produced by the printer. Nobody could figure out how that might have happened. But a reader caught it.
Same thing happened with Last Bets. It takes place on a island in the Netherland Antilles. Three mentions are made of seeing the coastline of Venezuela from the dive boat. That’s possible from one of the N.A. islands but not this one.
Thankfully, these kind of corrections could still be made before pub date, because no actual books had been sold and shipped to customers.
Another great thing about this pause between pre-orders and release is that I could add about eight trade reviews and author blurbs that came in later than anticipated. After some discussion with my editor and team, we even decided to use one of the better reviews (from Kirkus) on the cover, which meant bringing in the designer, proofreader, and editor again. I added the rest of the reviews to the early “praise pages” before the first chapter.
None of this would’ve happened without pre-orders, in my view. So not only do they allow the rankings to rise, with bestseller categories being a possibility, they give you and your team the option of making last-minute changes without having uncorrected copies out there, other than the ARC (advance reader copy).
Marry pre-orders with advance reviews
If you’re seeking new readers, not just those who already know you or your writing, advance reviews are a key. A magic combination, I learned, is to support those pre-orders with reviews on Goodreads, BookBub, or other peer review sites.
My wonderful launch team was made up of 60-70 volunteers, and they each got a free advance copy of the ebook. In exchange, I asked them to each write an honest review of the book on Goodreads and BookBub, ideally before pre-orders began, at minimum before the book’s release date.
About 50 of them did! The reviews helped me stay encouraged but they also helped browsers who saw the blogger mention of my books and wanted to know more.
I could also share these early reader reviews on social media and in my emails to friends and family, which I believe encouraged them to take the risk to pre-order my novel as well.
If you’ve read this newsletter for a while, you know that I’m a big believer in reviews as part of why people buy a book. At least for me, reading a positive review encourages me to buy. I reminded the launch team to only post honest reviews—that’s very important on these sites—and I was thrilled when the average on Goodreads stayed above a 4.5 star rating (5 being the top).
Each time a review posted, it felt like a big hug of congratulations.
I love supporting authors by pre-ordering. When an author I love announces a new book, I definitely click to buy ahead of time. It’s fun to await the arrival of a favorite story and I know it helps the author in so many ways.
Pre-orders in a nutshell
Pre-ordering a book is essentially reserving your copy. You don’t pay until delivery and you can change your mind.
Pre-orders allow you to build some buzz ahead of release date. Buzz is basically the excitement potential readers feel when a book is getting extra attention.
If you combine pre-orders with advance reviews, as Goodreads and BookBub allows, you can support the pre-order option—readers can find out whether the book interests them by reading these reviews.
If you’re lucky and time your pre-order promotion well, you can rise in the ranks of online booksellers and possibly get that wonderful “best-seller” status to use in all your promotion.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
I made a New Year’s resolution to do two things to support other authors. I would pre-order a book each week, if I could, to support the pre-order process for another author. And I would post a reader review on Goodreads or BookBub.
Consider this for yourself this week. How might you support other authors and pay forward for when you are published? (Check out the Shout Out! column below for two authors who are happy to get your pre-orders.)
And please, consider pre-ordering my new novel this week!