The Importance of Presale
In case you haven’t heard, we have officially opened up the PRESALE for Dede Fox’s “The Woodlands Art Benches: Sparking Connections” in our online store. In addition, we are looking forward to launching another presale with a different author in the near future. So, what does that mean? Why is presale important? How does your participation in presale make a difference?
One of the biggest benefits of presale is simply the number of units sold. Traditionally, presale numbers have been rolled into the first-week sales numbers, which dictates if a book will make it onto any of the best-seller lists. Big publishing houses with deep pockets and extensive distribution networks relied on these numbers to ensure that their top authors with established fan-bases consistently placed on these lists. Thus, presale became one of the most important time frames in book sales, before a book was even printed! A successful presale campaign became a key component of a book’s success.
With the vast number of independent publishers and self-published authors that are now entering the market, those first week numbers are no longer one of the main benefits of presale. With shallower pockets and smaller networks, the likelihood of these publications achieving first week numbers that place it on these best-seller lists is inherently diminished. We simply cannot compete with those large publishing houses. But this does not mean that presale doesn’t matter to us. Presale is a valuable tool for small publishers to help them better allocate their resources.
The most important benefit of presale for these smaller companies is to help us get an idea of how many books we need to print. If a book is showing small numbers in presale, then we may want to decrease our initial print run. Conversely, if a book is showing strong presale numbers, it may benefit us to increase our initial print. In this way, we are better able to serve our readers by ensuring we have stock available for purchase while simultaneously ensuring that we do not over-order and end up sitting on a large back stock that we cannot move. This allows a publisher to better plan so that they do not overspend on printing or storage. For self-published authors and small companies with limited financial resources, presale can also ensure that funds are available for a print run.
Presale numbers can help increase sales of a book. High presale numbers can indicate to vendors that this is a book that they want to carry on their shelves, further adding to the sale numbers. It can also suggest to existing vendors that they may want to increase their orders. The presale period is the beginning of a potentially very powerful cycle of supply and demand. Done correctly, a successful presale can have a massive effect on overall sales for an author.
Therefore, your partcipation in a presale is extremely important. If you are a fan of the author, the genre, or the publisher, you can best support them by ordering your copy during the presale period. For poetry fans, they can now order their copy of “The Woodlands Art Benches: Sparking Connection” at https://www.typingmonkeypublishers.com/store/p/presale-woodlands-art-benches-sparking-connections-by-dede-fox.
