Why isn’t a pre-order from Amazon as helpful?
As a debut author with a small Indie Publisher, pre-orders are important to me for several reasons:
-
Inkshares usually does a small first print run for a new author. I am hoping to bring Henderson House to a larger audience, and pre-orders help my publisher know if they should do a larger first printing.
-
When you pre-order my novel from your Independent Bookstore or Barnes & Noble, they end up placing an order with Ingram, Inkshare’s book distributor. If those stores see a lot of pre-orders, they might get excited and bulk order even more copies! Those are real orders and help my publisher know to print more books.
-
Amazon’s book buying, on the other hand, is almost entirely algorithmic now. This means they only order enough books to cover outstanding orders and what they expect their near-term orders to be. They don’t buy in bulk or warehouse inventory anymore. So if you pre-order my book through Amazon, it might raise traffic on my page, but it doesn’t boost my pre-sale numbers or inform Inkshares as to the size of the initial print run.
-
Theoretically, if everyone pre-ordered on Amazon, my publisher would have little knowledge of those numbers, they would do their usual small initial print run, and we might end up not having enough books to fill all the pre-orders! There could be a delay getting Henderson House into your hands and I certainly don’t want that. 😊
Hope this makes sense. And thanks for caring enough to learn more.
Best,
Caren
