Julie Broad from Book Launchers walks through preorder mistakes authors make and how to fix them. Upload files 6 to 8 weeks early, know that Amazon ebook preorders can go up to a year out but need final files 72 hours before launch, and never change files at the last minute. If something breaks, schedule your launch event two business days after release to give Amazon time to catch up.
Questions this video answers
At least six weeks in advance (closer to eight weeks for international clients).
72 hours before the launch date.
As early as one year prior to the release date.
Once (you can move it one time).
Amazon may cancel your preorders and you can lose preorder privileges with Amazon for a year.
Chapters
There's this awful thing that can happen. You've worked intensely hard to get ready for your book launch. You've lined up all these events, your book army's activated and your ads are set to roll on launch day. And then whether it's a day before launch or your launch day, disaster strikes. Pre orders get canceled, books aren't for sale, or there is some other issue. It sucks. And it happens more often than any author would like. It certainly happens more often than we'd like to see happen as a self publishing services team because we often get the blame. Like we can control what Amazon or Ingram or the bookstores do. But what we have learned is that there are ways to minimize the potential and minimize the potential impact if disaster strikes with your pre order. So if you want to protect your pre orders, this video is for you. Hey there. I'm Julia the Book Broad, multi award winning author and founder of a fabulous self publishing services company called Book Launchers. There's a rather long list of things that we've seen cause snags when you're close to your launch date. Human error to weird system glitches, to files getting hung up in approvals. There's plenty more things that can cause snags than any author may realize. But rather than list all the issues because some of them are really truly random, I'd prefer to highlight a couple of things to help you prevent or at least mitigate the impact of pre order problems. First things first. The smartest approach is to give yourself a lot of time in pre sale. We encourage all all of our clients to have their book totally done and uploaded to the distribution sites at least six weeks in advance. If we're working with an international client, including one of my fellow fabulous Canadians, we like it to be closer to eight weeks. The reason is because all the catalogs take time to populate your local bookstore catalog. Whether it's Chapters, Kohl's, Barnes and Noble or somewhere else, they are not instantly getting updated when you upload your book. And sometimes once they're updated, they still need a little nudge to to get your book cover out there. Or in the case of chapters in Canada, they often list the Kobo listing but not the print until we nudge them to get the print book up there too. The thing is, all of those nudges take time. Second, if you have set a launch date with Amazon, you need to make sure you get those final files uploaded in time. KDP allows you to set up pre orders for your ebooks so you can Start promoting your book before it's released. Setting a pre order allows customers to order your ebook as early as one year prior to its release date. When you're setting up a new ebook, you can choose to make it available for pre order and set a date in the future. Though your ebook isn't available for download yet, customers can order that ebook anytime leading up to the release date you set and it will be delivered to them on your launch date. Now, after you set up a pre order, you're going to see a timer on the top of your book setup page that keeps track of the deadlines to submit the files you'd like delivered to those customers. If you ever wonder what those deadlines are, you can check out Amazon's own page for info, but but it's 72 hours before your launch, but pay close attention to this line in their user agreement. You have until the submission deadline to upload your manuscript file, but we encourage you to finish setting up your pre order and upload the final version early in the event changes are needed to meet our publishing guidelines. Yep, we've seen some files hung up in an approvals process for more than a week, so you can do the math on what that does. If you're waiting until the last minute to to do the final file upload, if you miss their deadline, they will cancel your pre orders and you can lose your pre sale privilege with Amazon for a year. Once you've set a launch date with Amazon, you can move it once, but that's it. Amazon does not do pre sale for print books. We set that up through Ingram so the print books are available for pre sale as well as the Kindle. Also a fun fact for pre orders for ebooks with Amazon, if you have people buy your Pre order at $9.99 and then you drop your price to 99 cents in the week before launch to promote your book. All those pre orders that paid $9.99, they get a deal. They get it for 99 cents. So I suggest doing the reverse. If you want to offer some people your book at 99 cents, do that before you start heavy public promotion number three. You've given yourself a nice pre sale window. Now you have things you've noticed in your book that you want to change. Well, you can still still update your files when it's in pre sale, but if you do this too close to launch date, as we've noted, you can end up with potential issues. We've had files get hung up in approvals at Amazon and seen other weird issues if you're making updates. So if your launch is within a week, just wait until post launch to update any file you've already uploaded. Just so nothing weird happens with your launch. Fourth tip Set any and all in fact launch events for at least two business days after your launch day. You can still have an email blast go out on your launch day and promote it on your social media. But just in case there's an issue, any live events or paid ads that are not running for we forgot to turn the furnace off. Whoopsies Dance Intern okay, just in case there's an issue, I would avoid having live events or paid ads running for at least a few days so you have room to resolve those issues. We had a client do a big virtual event on his launch day. He had more than 100 people at his event and everyone was trying to buy his book. That day Amazon went out of stock because he was selling so many and a third party seller jumped in and started selling his book for a big price tag. If you want to learn more about that, you can check out the Amazon buy box control video that I've got on my channel. Chapters in Canada where he's located wasn't stocking the print book yet. We'd already been in touch with them. But resolving issues takes time and it hadn't been addressed yet. We're sure he lost some sales and he felt bad for the people who bought it from the third party seller charging three times as much. It was still a great launch, but it was a bit of a bummer because we've seen a few different versions of this story. We do recommend you space things out and don't do a major event on launch day. A few extra days and a lot of these issues would have been ironed out and avoided. Number five if you have a pre order problem, you have to shake it off and move forward. It sucks. It really sucks. But what matters is what you do next. Problems happen and your book is out and hopefully it's awesome. So focus on finding readers, not on what could have been. If you have pre orders with Amazon and they get canceled for some reason you you can contact Amazon and try to get it resolved. That may or may not work out. Sometimes you can get a compassionate person who will find some sort of a resolution for you, use their contact form, use their callback form and then contact them again. But ultimately problems with pre orders and leading into launch day do happen. There's systems and humans involved and both can have glitches from time to time. Give yourself as much space as you possibly can to resolve any issues that arise, because rushing is one of the fundamental sources of these problems, and space out your launch promotions so the damage is minimal should an issue arise at the last minute. If you like mitigating risks and preventing problems, smash that thumbs up button and join me in a future video by subscribing to this channel and turning the notifications on now. If you're wondering about that buy box thing, this video right here is what you want to see. Now if you want some marketing tips to make the most of that pre order period, this launch strategy video will give you a good menu to choose from. Both are really worth your time and I would just like to spend some more time with you. So I'll be waiting for you over there.
