Before Part 9 you travelled the deep end and are now almost at the finish line! You’ve decided whether to go Amazon-exclusive or ‘wide’, and you set up your ebook page, but, of course, there are many more things to consider. One of them is whether you want to set up your ebook for pre-orders or simply publish it.
Amazon gives you the possibility to publish the book once all the files and meta data has been approved, but should you? The answer to that question is a very typical ‘well, it depends’. It depends very much on your whole publishing strategy as a whole.
Pre-Order Campaigns
As a debut author, Amazon has no data about you and your book. It doesn’t have any idea who your target audience is, and who it should recommend the book to begin with. So, by setting the book up for pre-orders after revealing the cover and while you’re promoting the book on social media and waiting on those ARC readers to pick up the book, building up some hype, Amazon’s algorithm is learning a lot about your book and who your target audience is.
Another plus of setting up the book for pre-order is that pre-orders count for the book’s ranking on the Amazon store’s ‘Hot New Releases’, so if your book’s pre-order campaign is going really well, you can get listed on this list, which typically gives it even more eyes, and generates more subsequent pre-orders. And Amazon typically recommends books which are already selling well, because that’s how it makes money, so it just becomes a healthy cycle where you do well, Amazon does well, and more readers find your book, and hopefully they’ll love it.
At the same time, the length of the pre-order campaign is also important. I know one author who became a massive indie success after leaving his book out open for pre-orders for six months, which is usually how long pre-order campaigns last for traditionally-published books. That said, six months only makes sense if you have a pretty long, solid and well-oiled strategy for those six months. If you do that, make sure you are promoting relentlessly, scheduling interviews, blog posts, maybe a blog tour, giveaways, etc.
In fact, the reason most indie authors prefer to do something much shorter, like one month or a month and a half, is because it is already enough to give Amazon a taste of who the readers are, it gives you a chance to reach and climb up the Amazon ranks and, at the same time, it’s just long enough that you can coordinate some promotional activities without it being overwhelming. This is your debut after all, and you still have a day job, a family, etc, and there’s only so much time in the day.
Pre-orders can also work really well for series. Launch book one and immediately set up pre-orders for book two even if it’s not written yet. This allows you to hopefully capitalise on those readers who just finished book one, loved it and want to read more. If you don’t do this, by the time you launch book 2, they might not even remember or be prioritising your series. But if they pre-ordered it back in the day, they have an incentive to get back to it.
Pre-orders or direct publishing?
My personal opinion is that pre-orders are pretty good, but all that said, I also know of an author who became a massive success and he never even opened pre-orders. He simply published the book on the day he said he would, and that was that. I’ve thought a lot about this and why he chose to do it this way, and I think part of me understands why. Here’s why I think he did not do pre-orders, and why it may work that way as well:
As a debut author, you’re unknown. Literally nobody knows you and they haven’t heard about you. With that in mind, realistically, how many pre-orders can you expect to get? The only way to get that number up a lot is to relentlessly promote your book in the build-up to the launch, as I mentioned earlier. But what if you... move that promotional schedule to the first few weeks of the official book launch?
It makes sense, right? All of a sudden, instead of getting people excited about a book which isn’t out yet, you’re promoting something that is already out. They can read it immediately! This is riskier, in my opinion, and it will depend heavily on your marketing skills and ability to execute a solid promotional strategy, because you won’t have the Amazon ranks to rely on. At the same time, if your book launch flops, you can always try to do a better job at promoting it or learn how to do it. Just be aware that if you choose to go this route, it’s riskier.
Ride the Algorithmic wave, don't drown in it
I should also mention that the Amazon algorithm prefers recent books versus older ones, and it always gives newly published books the chance to shine. This means that if you do things right and promote the book properly, you are increasing the chances of surfing the wave of the algorithm, instead of being swept away by the same wave and drowning as a result.
Both pre-orders and not using them can be valid strategies, as long as you know why you are picking one over the other. Research, talk to more seasoned authors and ask them why they went the route they did. And, as always, always have a serious marketing plan ahead, whether for a pre-order campaign or for a book launch itself.
In the next part, we’re going to be looking at other fun things, mostly still related to the launch of the book, just in different formats. So far, we’ve mostly been talking about ebooks, but just because they make up the bulk of an author’s income, that doesn’t mean physical books and audiobooks don’t deserve a lot of attention as well.
(Continues in Part 11)
