Preorders again. Please share any tricks

[alhawke]

I'm releasing my trilogy. The 3rd book is going up as a preorder everywhere wide except Kobo. Kobo requests a couple chapters of the manuscript as a sample. Why? They are the only retailer doing this and I'm not ready to release the start of an unedited book (particularly with the chance that the rough draft "sticks"). So, I'm checking to see if those of you who sell through Kobo send out dummy chapters for preorders. I've heard problems with this in the past, so I'm wary.

I'm very close to excluding Kobo for preorders. I don't want to as I'm wide, but I'm not sure there's a comfortable alternative.

[alhawke]

Perhaps I should have left out Kobo.

I'm inviting anyone to share how you do your preorders. Amazon's straight forward. Put the cover up and decide on a date. But I'm looking for advice wide, even your ideas if you're KU.

I have a preorder up on Apple, B&N, and Amazon but hesitate with Google Play and Kobo due to their manuscript requirement. I don't have a manuscript to download. My preorder is set for four months from now (after following many of your recommendations). Some authors send out "dummy" pages for their preorder, but I've read that this sometimes leads to the incomplete or fake manuscript being released at the time of publication. As I'm four months out, perhaps I'm safe?

[Eric Thomson]

When I do pre-orders.... And after using pre-orders several times, I'm still not convinced it's any damn use... I only do Zon, Google Play & Kobo, i.e. those with whom I'm direct. The D2D requirements to have the final MS put up fourteen days out is a non starter, so no pre-order on Apple or the smaller retailers. I don't put any place holder file on Zon because that's where the f*ckups are most likely to happen. Since I only ever set up a pre-order once my MS is in my editor's hands, I have a product that's pretty final to use as placeholder on Kobo and GP. And as they recommend, I upload the final final at least 72hrs before release date. So far, no problems, but I haven't bothered with pre-orders on my last three releases because I found no upside and too many annoyances.

[alhawke]

Thanks for your input! I agree and my preorders now tend to run for only a week. In fact, I didn't even bother with one for my newest release this week.

But, in this particular case, I'm marketing the series by pushing the first book. The first book will be at a reduced price and is being promoted by BookBub. The hope is, this will place many eyes on my new release, my second book, and the preorder.

But GooglePlay and Kobo is probably out because I don't have a working complete manuscript. I'm very tempted to add a "dummy" manuscript--at least in GooglePlay because they don't require chapters. Do any of you do this? If I hear silence, or failure, I simply won't add GooglePlay or Kobo. It's a shame as these retailers should be in line with all the other ones.