Should You Run a Preorder Campaign?

One of the questions I hear often - especially from debut authors - is whether they should host a preorder campaign for their novel. In fact, there are a slew of questions when it comes to preorders:

Do preorder incentives work?

What actually gets readers to buy early? 

Is it worth the investment of time, energy, and money? 

How much will my publisher help with the campaign?

Like everything in publishing, it depends. But let's dig into it the best we can today.

(Real quick first: I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that With All My Haunted Heart has a robust preorder campaign! And for the month of June, that includes a $1 donation to The Trevor Project for every paperback ordered through Protagonist Books & Coffee. You can preorder your copy here and help support LGBTQ+ youth this Pride Month!)

Basics of Preorder Campaigns

At its most basic, a preorder campaign is any organized push to encourage readers to preorder your book before the release date. 

Why Preorders Matter 

At the risk of being redundant (you've probably heard this before) but preorders can impact how much publisher support and retailer buy-in your book gets.

Unexpectedly large preorder numbers can encourage the publisher to invest more resources in supporting the book than they were initially planning. It's one of the earliest indicators of potential success, and publishers tend to capitalize on that. 

Good preorder numbers can also help tip the scales in your favor when it comes to retail placement - how many copies B&N stocks, whether Target or Walmart add the book to their shelves, etc.

A preorder campaign is one way to encourage readers to buy a book early rather than waiting for the release date.

What makes a preorder campaign different from simply requesting people preorder or making posts about how preorders help the author is that the reader gets something in addition to the book as a thank you for ordering early.

99% of the time, these campaigns are fully (or mostly) organized and funded by the author. 

If you're already a big name author, the publisher may put this together for you, but otherwise, you're on your own. 

That said, you may be able to get support for some of it, so definitely ask! Previously, my publishers have done things like design bookmarks for me (sometimes they'll print them, sometimes not), and I've heard of pubs reimbursing authors for the money they spent commissioning art (but that's fairly rare, so don't plan on it in your budget). 

 
The Pros & Cons of Preorder Campaigns

Before I dive into the pros and cons, please know that you absolutely do not have to do a preorder campaign. If you're already at capacity with what you're doing to grow your author career, please do not feel pressure to add this to your plate. 

It's more important to make sure you have the energy to keep going and write more books than to hustle to put together a preorder campaign. 

The Pros

• A preorder campaign naturally gives you something to post about online for your book. If you struggle to come up with ideas for what to share, this gives you an excuse to share our book
  • Which is important! So much of author-based marketing (in my opinion) is about reminder people that your book exists so they remember to buy it.
• They can be fun! If you focus on incentives that bring you joy (and don't break the bank), this can be a great excuse to invest in character art or stickers or whatever makes your heart happy.
• Thinking about the campaign as a way to spoil your readers with something extra can feel really good, especially if asking for a sale feels otherwise uncomfortable 
• It can keep your book top of people's minds (when you share info about the campaign regularly).
  • The most recent marketing research says someone has to see your offer 11 times before they even decide whether they're interested! 
  • So yes, share the same stuff often! People need the reminders! 
• Preorder campaigns, at their core, help capture sales you likely would have made anyway. But by condensing those numbers so they all fall on the first week of on-sale, you get your best chance to have a splashy release week.
  • For most new and mildest authors, this gives us the best chance at cracking a bestseller list. Just remember that you can have a successful career without ever achieving that milestone (aka don't be mean to yourself if you don't list!)
• If you partner with an indie bookstore (more on that below!) it can be a great way to foster those relationships while also supporting the store by driving sales their way

The Cons

• Depending on what types of incentives you choose, preorder campaigns can get expensive. Especially if you end up mailing out goodies that don't fit in a standard envelop
  • And postage (especially international) can get really expensive really quick
• You won't have any hard data on how much the preorder campaign actually helped your sales 
  • Yes, you'll probably know roughly how many preorders you got based on how many ordered through an indie (or if you had a form people fill out to claim their goodies), but you won't have any way to know if those folks would have preordered anyway 
  • Plus, some people will preorder because they saw your posts but not bother to fill out the form (I'm guilty of this. I generally don't actually want the incentives - I just want the book) 
• Logistics can be a pain. Unless the preorder campaign is run exclusively through a single indie, you'll need a way to track who preordered and either email or snail mail incentives yourself (or both). 
  • If you're tech savvy, you can automate a lot of this for digital incentives (like bonus/deleted scenes) which helps 
• If you're already feeling overwhelmed, preorder campaigns become just one more thing to juggle when you're busy trying to write your next book.
  • If a preorder campaign feels like it might be the final straw to send you into burnout, skip it. (Or learn more about how coaching can help you eliminate overwhelm and burnout-proof your career.)

 
Overall, if you approach the campaign as a way to thank your readers and choose incentives that are cost effective and keep logistics simple, I think they're worth doing.

 
What Incentives Should You Include?

Okay, so you've decided to go ahead with a preorder campaign. What types of incentives should you include? 

When making this decision for myself, I focus on a couple key questions:

• What is my budget? How much am I happy to spend even if I don't get the return I expected?
• What would I enjoy as a reader?
• What feels fun? What inspires joy?
• What is simple and doable given my current schedule? 
• What will be cost effective to get to readers?
• Bonus question: what do I think will inspire to readers to take action NOW rather than waiting until release?

To help you along, here are some of the common incentives I've seen authors provide. 

Digital Incentives

• Bonus writing: this could be a short story/novella, deleted scenes, bonus/extended spicy scenes (ideal for romance), extended epilogue, etc. 
  • I personally love this both as an author and as a reader. This is the thing that's most likely to get me to actually fill out a preorder form. I buy a book for the story / because I love the author's writing. Getting more of that writing? Getting more time with characters I've fallen in love with? Yes, please! 
• Digital art/printables: emailing readers high-res copies of art you've commissioned (maybe even formatted to be a phone screensaver) is quicker, easier, and cheaper than printing the art yourself 
  • I like to pair this with having printed art available only through my local indie to save myself from having to go to the post office 
  • For With All My Haunted Heart, I'm also in the process of commissioning the cover artist to create a coloring page version of the cover that I can email to readers for them to print out and color themselves.
    • Do I have any proof this will be popular? No. But I think it will be so fun! So I'm doing it mostly for me. 
• Book club visit / author AMA: I offered this before as a "grand prize" style incentive, where I chose one person from all the preorders to get a 30-min zoom call with me. They could use it for themselves to ask me anything or they could bring me in to talk with a group of their friends "book club" style 
  • This was super fun and only costs your time!
• Something thematic to your book: this will obviously vary a ton, but things like the writing playlist for the book would fall under here. 
  • For With All My Haunted Heart, since it's a witchy book, part of my preorder campaign includes a custom 3-card tarot reading from me!
    • Another case of "this sounds super fun and it's free!" 
  • Another option: for Pride Month, my agent suggested pairing preorders with a donation to an LGBTQ+ organization to encourage folks to preorder this month rather than waiting until closer to release. If there's a cause that's relevant to your book, that might be an option, too. 
    • I set mine as $1 per copy preordered through my indie, with a cap of $250. (Want to contribute to The Trevor Project? You can order your copy of With All My Haunted Heart here!)

 
Physical Incentives

• Character art: this is probably the most common incentive I've seen lately. Either printed on standard cardstock or as those semi-transparent vellum pages. 
• Stickers/pins/bookmarks: these are all fun, but they can get expensive -- both the printing/creation of them and the shipping for things that aren't flat or are too big to fit in a regular envelop.  

You can also do a blend of digital and physical incentives. I'm doing mailable versions of character art (plus 2 bookmarks) only available through Protagonist (so I don't have to go to the post office myself) and then digital versions for orders anywhere else.

Which brings me to...

Partnering with an Indie Bookstore

Partnering with your local independent bookstore can be one of the more rewarding parts of hosting a preorder campaign. 

The connections you make with the store can last well beyond this one book. (I've done so many events with my local indie by virtue of being available and flexible for them!) 

How easy it will be to set this up can vary based on your location and how many authors are in your area. (I know NYC authors can have a harder time than I do in the middle of nowhere here in Central New York.)

When I approach bookstores, my goal is to make it as easy and enticing for them as possible, especially if you're going to ask them to mail out the incentives for you. (Another reason to keep things flat so they can slide into the book!)

In order to help further funnel your readers to the indie, I like having the printed incentives only available through them (plus signed copies!) while still allowing folks to order from wherever. 

Final Thoughts

At the end of the day, preorder campaigns are an optional part of releasing a book that you absolutely do not have to do but can add an element of fun to the process. 

If you choose to host a campaign, focus on making it fun, simple, and cost effective so that it adds joy to releasing your book, not more stress.

Happy writing,
Isabel 

PS - The July cohort of The Confident Author Academy is enrolling right now! Applications close on June 20th. If you're ready to fall back in love with writing, meet deadlines without burnout, and create an author career you never want to quit, click here to learn more and apply.

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