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Post by lou on Dec 11, 2016 13:19:51 GMT -5
Cons first: - on Amazon (which I'm exclusive to), ranking responds to the pre-orders. So it mutes your big release-day ranking spike. Book ranking gets a rolling hill instead of a peak.
- you must hit the deadline (but most everyone here does that for their editors, so it's no big deal for most of you)
- (this space reserved for that thing I'm forgetting)
Pros: - It gives your fans who aren't on the mailing list or FB fans a chance to find it before release date. I thought my initial bunch of orders the first 24 hours would be all who bit, but it grew to 2.5 times that number in 18 days. So there are plenty of series fans who aren't on the list but who check regularly at Amazon to see if it's up yet.
- You can spread out the stress of release-day tasks. I took 2 days upon setting up the pre-order to get my website updated, create the book's FB page, and so on. You could take many days at it and hardly feel a thing. It leaves very few tasks for the actual release day. My stress levels for this release were nil. As the stress from the last one nearly killed me (I do not exaggerate), this trumps every other consideration for me.
- They've gotten much better than the last time I tried this about warning via email about the deadline for uploading the final file. I re-uploaded several times as the last few (I hope) typos were found, in case I was kidnapped by aliens or something, so the best version was always up. No glitches with that.
- You can time it to coincide with something else (like an ad campaign for first in series).
- There's something psychologically reassuring about having it for sale, even if you're not making money yet. So if you tend to rush to publication, having it up there as pre-order could slow you down and make you check that fact or hyphenation rule one more time.
- Needless to say, I'm not there or close to there, but it's a nifty way to make your run for a USAT best-seller slot work more smoothly.
- If you give your mailing list a discount by releasing it lower and raising the price, you can give them a short window indeed by raising the price an hour after it goes live (takes 6-12 hours for it to show on product page, in my experience). If you were consistent about this and mentioned it a lot on social media, it might make more people sign up to your list.
- If you release slowly, you can have 90 extra days when it is clear to fans that something is coming soon, a promise of a date.
Other notes: not sure if it changed my KU fans' experience. Were they able to pre-order it too? Dunno. No idea if the +Follow list at Amazon received an email during the pre-order phase or not (I should click that myself, and I'd know, eh?) According to SFF Marketing podcast, other vendors do count the pre-orders for ranking only on release date, so you get the ranking spike everywhere but Amazon. And mine was in the top 5000 on release day anyway, #2 on Hot and New for the subgenre most of the day, which is darned good for these books, so...I'm fine with the way Amazon does it. Disagree, point out what I've missed, etc. But I'm a newly minted fan of the pre-order. |
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Post by Suzy on Dec 11, 2016 16:45:17 GMT -5
Sounds great, lou! I will seriously consider this for my next release.
My one concern is that they publish a draft before the date,which I have heard can happen sometime.
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Post by lou on Dec 11, 2016 16:58:25 GMT -5
Sounds great, lou! I will seriously consider this for my next release. My one concern is that they publish a draft before the date,which I have heard can happen sometime. When I tried it back in 2014, they shut off my uploading the final version 36 hours before they said they would, and that was bad. I assume they've gotten better, as Amazon does tend to iron out glitches eventually, but I also made sure my final version was up there 72 hours before their deadline, just in case. So far, I've received no emails about "my gosh, there are like thirty typos in this thing," and the first couple reviews are fine, so I think I'm good. |
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Post by Suzy on Dec 11, 2016 17:01:48 GMT -5
Sounds great, lou! I will seriously consider this for my next release. My one concern is that they publish a draft before the date,which I have heard can happen sometime. When I tried it back in 2014, they shut off my uploading the final version 36 hours before they said they would, and that was bad. I assume they've gotten better, as Amazon does tend to iron out glitches eventually, but I also made sure my final version was up there 72 hours before their deadline, just in case. So far, I've received no emails about "my gosh, there are like thirty typos in this thing," and the first couple reviews are fine, so I think I'm good. That's a good tip.Better to have the final version up a couple of days beforehand, then. |
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Post by Miss Terri Novelle on Dec 11, 2016 17:37:44 GMT -5
What I've done is put up a dummy file that basically just says this is the not for sale preorder version of the book. If you're seeing this, please email me to let me know OR I've put a different, fully edited copy of one of my other books with a similar note. That way they never get some half finished book that I'd be mortified for them to see.
I have a preorder up right now. It will be the fourth one I've done. The first three were not a good idea. I did them for the first three Ponderosa Pines books and it was a bad idea. One I said I'd never repeat...and yet...here I am again.
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Post by scdaffron on Dec 11, 2016 17:59:14 GMT -5
I did a preorder on one of my books, mostly because of the timing. I wanted to take advantage of BookBub's (then) new feature of emailing people who follow you, but it didn't start until I think January of 2016. I figured no one would be interested in a new release over the holidays anyway, so, I uploaded the final file and put it on preorder for only a few days, then it went live. It gave me an excuse to email my list about the preorder (near Christmas), then about the release (after the holidays when my email had a prayer of being read). And BookBub sent out the email to my followers, which got a few more sales.
Because of the way I did it, I didn't notice much of a difference sales-wise. But it was convenient and I didn't run into any of the awful snafus that some people have reported with Amazon screwing up something.
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Post by Rinelle Grey on Dec 12, 2016 1:25:39 GMT -5
Yeah, I love preorders for all those reasons. I can plan my launch, and know when a book goes live. No hanging around and clicking refresh all day wondering when it will drop. My mailing list and bookbub alerts go out on the day it goes live. Most of my recent releases make it sub 5k ranking too.
I've done about 10 preorders now, and had absolutely no problems with people getting the wrong file. I do always upload at least a day early, as I find it too hard to figure out what the date converts to here in Australia. No idea if that helps or not.
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Post by Miss Terri Novelle on Dec 12, 2016 2:10:36 GMT -5
There's a lovely countdown box in the new dashboard layout if you've gotten that upgrade. I know it hasn't been rolled out to everyone yet...I know exactly how long I have left to make changes. Right down the second. Probably my favorite thing they've done all year.
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