Dear readers,

I’m glad you’re finding this entire Amazon KDP series(this, this and this) on the newsletter informative and useful. I am not yet ready with Part 3 as I promised but hope to post it soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve dabbled with the Pre-order option on Amazon KDP a few times now and I thought I should let you know what it does and what it doesn’t.

If you have readers in India, they cannot actually pre-order your book as they normally would do for a book that is posted by a publisher. Readers can only ask to be notified when the book goes live or add the book to their wish list. This automatically makes it frustrating for the readers as pre-orders are available for the US market only. (I haven’t checked the other markets, so I don’t know for sure but they’re definitely not available for the Indian market).

So why put up a book for pre-order?

There are a few reasons –

It increases interest in the book.

Helps create a buzz (of sorts) about the book.

There’s a shareable link that you can post on social media (but again, Indian readers can’t buy from the link until the book goes live).

On the backend, where you are setting up the book, you will come across the pre-order section in the very first tab eBook Details. This is what it looks like.

If you choose the Make my Kindle eBook available for Pre-order, you will be asked to enter a release date. Let’s say, I choose July 31st.  This is what I see:

As you can see, I am informed that I must submit the final file before July 27, 2020. Here’s a little more about pre-orders if you want to read and decide for yourself.

Putting up a book for pre-order is exciting but it’s a good idea to know the ground reality as well. Here are a few questions you have to consider before doing this.

Do you want to move up the release? Then you have to submit the file on a new date, 3 days before the release date. In this case, if I want to release my book on 28th July, I have to submit the final file before 24th or 25th.

Do you want to delay the release? Here’s where it gets tricky. You can delay a release by 30 days, which means, instead of 31st July, I can release the book on 31st August. But I can do this just once. If I delay again, I will not be allowed to set up a pre-order for a new book for a full year. So choose your release date carefully.

You can also cancel the pre-order and un-publish it from the store but you will not be allowed to set up a pre-order for a whole year after this.

Here’s what you need to do before the deadline

I often end up cutting this close but here’s what you need to do before the release date:

Upload the final file at least two days before the release date. This is because once you finish entering the information on all the three tabs, you will see this button.

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The moment you hit on Submit for Pre-order, the book gets locked on the dashboard and after a few hours, it will appear on the Kindle store as an eBook available for pre-order.

You are allowed to edit the final file right until the last date, but be careful because once you reach the last date, the dashboard will be completely locked until the release date.

If you have uploaded a file with errors, you will not be able to do anything until the book is released. Only then will the dashboard get unlocked and you will be able to upload a new file.

So, is Pre-order the right choice for me?

I’d say it’s not worth the effort or the hassle. This is especially because you are not allowed to cancel the pre-order and release the book right away if you want to. You can only move up the release to a certain number of days and it can get frustrating.

It also adds no value to your sales figures. So it seems like a lot of trouble that you are unnecessarily putting yourself through.

You can however use it as a way to enforce a deadline upon yourself (believe me, this is no fun).

Some specific news for my readers (I don’t want to do a new post just for this)

Friends, as you all know, my last eBook Smitten by You is not the end of the Destination Wedding Series. Readers have been asking about Aditi’s story and when it will be releasing.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know as yet because I haven’t planned it out. I’m busy with few other writing projects and my publishers who are bringing out the sequel to Twenty Nine Going on Thirty will be able to confirm when it will be out only later this month. If it releases as planned (Corona having a good laugh at my expense), then I will have to postpone Aditi’s story by a few more months.

That’s it for now!

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