The AmWritingFantasy Podcast: Episode 138 – Book Pre sales vs Pre orders

What is the difference between preselling your book and making it available as a preorder on sites like Amazon? Is one better than the other?

Tune in to the Am Writing Fantasy podcast, episode 138, where Autumn and Jesper share the result of a recent experiment, using the pre sales function as mentioned by Mark Coker, the CEO and founder of Smashwords, in episode 118.

 

If you're interested in the $150 discount voucher, to be used for any of the Am Writing Fantasy premium courses, sign up via this link: https://www.subscribepage.com/awfnewsletter

 

Tune in for new episodes EVERY single Monday. 

SUPPORT THE AM WRITING FANTASY PODCAST!

Please tell a fellow author about the show and visit us at Apple podcast and leave a rating and review. 

Join us at www.patreon.com/AmWritingFantasy. For as little as a dollar a month, you’ll get awesome rewards and keep the Am Writing Fantasy podcast going.

Read the full transcript below.

(Please note that it's automatically generated and while the AI is super cool, it isn't perfect. There may be misspellings or incorrect words on occasion).

Narrator (2s): You're listening to The Am Writing Fantasy Podcast. In today's publishing landscape, you can reach fans all over the world. Query letters are a thing of the past. You don't even need an literary agent. There is nothing standing in the way of making a living from writing. Join two best selling authors who have self published more than 20 books between them now onto the show with your hosts, Autumn Birt and Jesper Schmidt.

Jesper (29s): Hello, I'm Jesper.

Autumn (31s): And I'm Autumn.

Jesper (33s): This is episode 138 of the Am Writing Fantasy podcast. Back in the eighth episode, 118, Autumn talked to special guests, Mark Coker, the CEO and founder of Smashwords. And during that conversation, some new tools where shared, which was around how to resell your books as opposed to set up pre-orders or pre-sale as you write and say, presale you books, as opposed to setup, pre-orders like to do on to Amazon. And you have been testing that out, Autumn.

Autumn (1m 8s): As always, I'm the perfect Guinea pig for all our experiments. So I tried out for free sales and I have tried out preorders, both on Smashwords in other places. So we have some results to share on some thoughts and tips. If anyone wants to check out this feature and I can't wait to share it, but really today we're both kind of getting back into the driver's seat because you just back from vacation.

Jesper (1m 38s): Yeah, yeah, indeed. I mean, we recorded the bunch of episodes before the holidays to carry us through. So in reality, well, for the listener, that sounds like it's only been a week, but for us it's been a month since we last recorded anything.

Autumn (1m 51s): Oh, I know you have to record it even late. Cause we had so much stuff to talk about forehand. So yeah, we have a lot

Jesper (1m 60s): Of future pants to the future plans to have to talk about

Autumn (2m 5s): Definitley, but you have a good vacation. It's been good. Yeah.

Jesper (2m 8s): Good vacation. A lot of relaxation and the doing as little as possible apart from reading a ton of books, I think I managed to read five books, which has never happened before or some of them where a fairly short, but there was also a one very long won in between. And so, yeah, and that was good. And the way it's been busy, so busy coming back, I must say a and the, the, the, the thing is that time off work always makes me think about a million new things. So apart from writing stuff, in what we should write about how we should tackle our next series, which we just talked about offline here, I've also filled up my pocket of marketing ideas, primarily like Facebook ads, strategies.

Jesper (2m 54s): I think you noticed all in once I started emailing about, can you make new ad images for this and that?

Autumn (3m 1s): I know you're on vacation. I started getting some new tasks. So I was like, wait, what? So I'm not on vacation. Doesn't mean you could assign me things. Yeah. It, you know, so it was fun. Oh yeah.

Jesper (3m 14s): Yeah. That, that happens. So, you know, I, I stopped thinking once, once I get down, then my brain start thinking about new things. So I think that's good. It's good to take some time off sometimes.

Autumn (3m 25s): Yes. I think it is very good. And I have to admit, even though I S I had a total task list that I, I didn't actually get the bottom, have there still few things on my list of things I've meant to do while you're on vacation when we didn't have our normal sessions when we record. So they're still have stuff to do, but I have to be in, I snuck in some extra books and some extra reading as well. So it was nice to meet me. You slow down a little bit and get some reading in it. It was kind of,

Jesper (3m