Why I don't offer pre-orders - with apologies and hugs... x

I recall a publisher being incredibly excited that they had negotiated a deal with Amazon to offer my books on pre-order. Which then turned out to be something we could all actually do, self pubbed people as well.

The idea of pre-order is for those loyal readers who really dont want to miss out on a book, and are willing to pay up front. This works well for publishers as the pre-orders are mostly from their sites as they always had been. The publisher thinking that Amazon pre-order is a good thing is something I don't argue with. But...

Say a reader buys my book on pre-order at Amazon in August - and say the book was actually due out 25 September. That *sale* in August is put against the book title on the day it was made and is not counted as a release day sale. By that I mean, the pre-orders don't all clump together as sales on release day.

So, if this book had a trickle of pre-orders it will hover lower down in the Amazon rankings, and also those early sales will dilute the actual release date sales. For authors that means those 200 pre-orders, which aren't counted on release day, means that their books don't hit the 100 on Amazon in MM.

A lot of Amazon sales are drive by. By that, I mean people see the cover, or the blurb, and click to find out more. If you're not being seen on Amazon then the chance of that drive buy purchase decreases.

So, even though I had quite a few emails from people asking about pre-order on Texas Wedding, I'm really sorry that I wasn't able to help, and hope you understand.

Hugs you all and hope this explains...

and... roll on 25th, only 3 days to go...

And have a quick sneak peek at tomorrows FB quote...