Marketing Monday's: Pre-orders

Pre-order hounds are burning the house!

After reading about Smashword's Preorder option, and attempting the strategy, I've contemplated that authors with a strong following would benefit greatly!

Here are a list of the benefits (and my commentary):

1. Preorders credit on day one of the release, the onsale date, which can spike the book on the charts. In turn that can potentially increase an author's odds of hitting one or more of the major bestseller lists. (Amazon doesn't play by that rule anymore...however Barnes & Nobel I believe still does.)

2. Your book is available on sale at these major retailers on the same day. (Only if you go through Smashwords. If you prefer to have more control over you descriptions or pricing in different platforms...well, then not so much because you have to upload them separately. Call me a control freak, but I like my changes to happen ASAP and not Smashwords two weeks later when they can get to it.)

3. Authors can execute more strategic advance marketing campaigns to build buzz and accumulate orders leading up to their official release date. (With the exception of social media, I couldn't find a place to exercise this type of marketing. Book tours require a link to your book, and they want it in advance. Putting an ad out there where do you send people exactly? Smashwords doesn't actually allow for preorders. How do I find the preorder page on B&N and Apple?)

4. The retailer will display your preorder title alongside your other books in their store. Which will enable you to capture the reader's order at that moment they're buying all your books. (Assuming you have other books...this might not be good for first time authors?)

5. Your advance preorder makes it easier for retailers to slot your book into special preorder promotions. (Ummm...don't they have big names before yours? How many pages do people have to shift through to get to it?)

I believe if you've got a strong following you could do it. The reason why I did the preorder was to hopefully get the book out on B&N and Apple at the same time as Amazon and Kobo. That's what the preorder feature is really all about for me.

ACTION ITEM: If you've got a strong following--this is a great feature! If you don't, it's a fantastic way to get your book on all platforms at the same time! I'm going to employ this for all my authors whether we get the spike of preorders or not.

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