We are so proud to be publishing your masterpiece. We want this book to be huge. We want the face of every commuter buried in its pages. We want every e-reader in America to glow with it. To make this happen, preorder sales are essential. We have to spread the word!
But you already knew all of this, right? I hope you’ve been hard at work for months getting the pre-sales lined up. The earlier you can get those sales, the better. Embed that call to action every chance you get. After all, the preorders aren’t going to sell themselves, and those preorders are a must.
In fact, many of our best authors have seen the value not just of pre-publication sales but also of pre-conception sales. If you can squeeze just a few preorders out of your book before you even write it, that will help for so many reasons, not least of which because it could give you the actual idea for the book.
Honestly, it’s optimal if you are already selling books before you become an author. This kind of preorder is like a big arrow hanging over your head for publishers that says, “Keep an eye on this one: they’re going to write a book one day.” It can be tough to get preorder sales before anyone, including yourself, knows that you’re an author, but you know that the folks you do get to preorder will stick with you for a long while, or at least until you actually write something.
There’s no reason you have to wait until adulthood to start either. You could get your parents involved while they’re still alive and have them make some sales at your childhood birthday parties. It’s a great way to get the word out, especially if you are careful in choosing your friends. If you can become pals with someone destined to have a large following on social media, that’s even better.
We’re probably still thinking too small though. Really, you can’t get much more “pre” than the invention of the codex for some truly effective preorder sales. There is very little in the way of competition at that point, so you will completely stand out. Your clothes and way of talking will also be practically otherworldly to them. If you can make the preorders happen without getting stoned or burned as a witch, it would also make an excellent blurb for your book. You might even start a new religion, which would be an incredible platform.
That said, we are publishing in all sorts of mediums these days, so the codex isn’t essential. Keep the marketing vague enough, and those who prefer scrolls won’t know the difference. You don’t have to say that it’s a book and that it’s not printed on vellum. Just clinch that preorder, and the rest is history.
Speaking of history, if you can get some preorder sales in before the dawn of writing, that will really set you up nicely. You will have to present it a bit differently so it’s less of an elevator pitch and more of a ziggurat oration. Note that there was a lot of suspicion about the very idea of writing at this early stage, so again, you’ll want to avoid people with rocks.
If you can do it, though, these preorders, in particular, will set all of us up well, given that human civilization would be a lot less interesting without the invention of writing. You may have to be willing to barter the book sale for some cattle or at least accept some atypical tender like shells or shiny stones. But if you can get a preorder from this early stage in human development, you’ll find that it opens up many doors—and not just for you.
