Is setting your book up for Pre-Order on Amazon a good idea?

There are some complex mathematical and financial implications for doing so, but I think there’s one reason that trumps them all.

I’m not, ahem, an advanced book marketer.* I can upload my book to Kindle Direct Publishing, add an editor, and create an ad for it using Amazon Marketing Services.

But if you go to the level where you talk about “going wide” (i.e. going beyond Amazon only) and ACoS and ROI and that sort of thing, I’m just not there. Yet.

At this point in my writing playtime, I mean, career, I’m using the Amazon Pre-Order for one main reason: a deadline. A deadline, in case this isn’t clear, for myself. So I, ahem, you know, finish the book and have it available by that date. I’m sure I’ve broken some rules and quite possibly messed some stuff up along the way, but if there’s one date that first and foremost on my mind today, it’s October 17, 2017.

This should light a fire under your pen:

“If you do not upload the final version of your book at least three days before its release date, then your pre-order will be cancelled, and customers will be notified that you did not publish your book.

Also, you have now lost pre-order access for one year since we did not receive the final version at least 10 days before the book’s release date.”

That’s the day my book, Every Single Day, launches. How do I know it’s going to happen on that date? Because that’s the date that I set on the Pre-Order. Why am I not going to cancel or delay that? Because, for starters, I’m an unstoppable writing (and marketing) machine. But furthermore, if you cancel or change your pre-order date, Amazon will ban you from using pre-orders for a year! It happened to two people I know.

Yet another reason to:

1. Use your pre-order date as a deadline and
2. Stick to it.

That’s my plan. Help me on launch day? Pre-order today!

Then there’s other stuff that goes beyond just that whole deadline thing:

• Why pre-orders killed my book launch (and other lessons I learned marketing my first fiction)
• Amazon’s New Pre-Order Policies Give Authors More Flexibility
• How to use Kindle pre-orders to pre-sell your self-published book

* Yet.