As someone presently in the weird liminal phase of having a book that is announced and up for preorder, but not out for another 2 months, I have been thinking a lot about preorders!
If you have a lot of authors in your life or follow our newsletters and social media, you have probably seen our pleas for people to preorder our books. “Preorders are so important to a book’s success🥺,” we say, our big watery eyes pathetic and imploring. It is embarrassing! Where’s the book? Not even printed yet? Trust me bro, you’ll like it, I prommy.
I very often preorder books, because I read a lot, I have a lot of writer friends, and I am a writer and publisher. It is not uncommon for me to preorder books the day they are announced. However, I am pretty certain this is weird and abnormal and many people, even many avid readers, never preorder a book, but just, like, buy them in a store when they come out, like a normal person. So I am personally trying to get preorders for my book, but also trying not to freak out too much about it, because I bet people will also just buy it once it’s out.
As I’ve been asking people to preorder my book, people in my life have often very kindly asked me what way of preordering it is most beneficial to me. Other than “how does it feel to know for certain you’re going to heaven,” my reply is generally that any way is good, and different ways have different benefits! So I thought I’d write a bit about that.
why are preorders important?
Preorders can be important:
- For author morale: Publishing a book is a long and vulnerable process, and PROMOTING a book is deeply mortifying. A vote of confidence really helps!
- To help the publisher decide on the size of the print run: Preorders help the press gauge interest in the book and decide how many copies to print, so that they aren’t caught short with no copies or stuck with a billion unsold ones.
- To help the publisher decide how much re$ources to allocate to promoting the book: To some extent, a press’s decisions about how much to $upport a book (how much work to put into pitching reviews, how much money to spend on marketing, to what extent they will help defray the costs of an author’s book tour) hinge on how many preorders the book gets.
how do you preorder a book?
You can preorder a book from its author directly (sometimes), from the publisher, from an independent bookstore, or from a large corporate bookstore (but I do not recommend you do the latter, please).
The first three of these will generally sell the book for the same price. (Large corporate bookstores will often sell books cheaper than their cover price, undercutting more principled booksellers), but divide the pie different ways between the author, the publisher, and the bookseller.
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From the author directly
A lot of authors don’t sell preorders of their books directly, but I am– I have copies for preorder on both my Canadian store and my US store. I feel really fortunate to be in a position to do so (e.g. already having online stores, and having knowledge and experience on selling stuff online and shipping it out). Because I didn’t get an advance for my book, this allows me to make a tiny bit of money before it is out, and to keep more of the cover price of the book (since I receive both the author share and the bookseller share in this case). This is really nice, since I am putting a lot of time and work into promoting the book, and will be spending money out of pocket to tour it around. If I weren’t selling copies myself this would be even harder financially to pull off than it already is.
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From the publisher directly
For example, you can preorder my book from its publisher, Fernwood! In this case, there is no third-party bookseller who is getting a piece of the pie, so the publisher gets the bookseller share. I think this is great because I chose a press I like, admire, and think is principled and aligned with my values, so I am happy for them to make some extra cash!
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From an independent bookstore
The benefits of preordering a book from an independent bookstore are:
- It supports independent bookstores, which we love! While this option makes less money for the author and publisher, I consider it a huge victory that my work makes a little bit of money for indie bookstores and supports their continued existence
- It makes bookstores aware of the book (and in some cases, the press, if it’s a small press the bookstore hasn’t worked with before).
- It helps your book reach audiences it might not otherwise. People walk in off the street who might not know you or your work, and indie booksellers are generally book lovers and good at hand-selling books to people, connecting them with work they might love but that wouldn’t have been on their radar otherwise.
I asked a few indie bookstore workers I know about what happens when people preorder a book at their store, and here’s what I heard:
“Especially when a book isn’t from a publisher we usually work with, it can put it on our radar. A lot of pre-orders means we order more stock for the shelves as well, and it sometimes flags that there would be interest in an author event if we can make it happen.”
– Saul, Another Story
“If it’s something that:
1. I believe [the store and its booksellers] will be happy to handsell
2. Something that seems to be a good fit with the bookstore, sure!
In the case of a new release, we can always talk to the distributor representatives and ask for more copies. And if it doesn’t sell well afterward, we can always return unsold copies. If it’s an independent distributors, it’s a case by case. Once I had a customer asking for a a book sold by a small distributor that i didn’t know of. Obv, we didn’t have anything in store or could preorder, but I’ve looked up the dist, loved their stock, reached out to them and ordered a small, but decent sized order. It sold pretty well and I was able to buy more from them. It’s pretty cool when this happens! The biggest takeaway is the relation between booksellers and customers goes both ways, we love to be able to provide for our community, and if the customers want more of certain books/ topics we can work for this. It also helps if the bookstore has an established identity [or specialization, that the book aligns with]”
– Anonymous local bookseller
In this case, the author, the publisher, and the bookstore are all getting part of the cover price of the book, but I don’t consider this a downside because I want to live in a world that has many flourishing independent bookstores!
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From a large corporate bookstore
Theoretically possible but obviously we’re not doing this, because we know that they’re bad for authors, bad for publishers, bad for their workers, bad for the planet, bad for us all.
ok also why doesn’t sheer spite do preorders?
Oh lol it’s because it stresses me out to sell people something I don’t actually have in-hand, and also because I can’t plan that far ahead! Sheer Spite is too small to have different “seasons” like a larger press does. Books come out when they’re done. I am uninterested in enforcing deadlines on authors for three reasons:
- that sounds miserable
- I am not offering anyone a lot of money. I am not able to be like “stop everything else and work on this, here’s $50,000”, so I want to instead be able to be flexible and work around everything else that people have going on in their lives.
- It’s also because I describe Sheer Spite as an “anti-ableist” press and I want to acknowledge that generally the people whose work I publish have a lot going on: chronic illnesses, jobs or fighting to stay on welfare/disability, supporting other friends/family/community members who are struggling, doing organizing and mutual aid work, etc etc etc. Books are important but they’re not THAT important, you know?
Anyways I am but a baby author and a miniscule press, so if you have anything to add to this, drop me a line at lee@sheerspite.ca.
