This pre-order thing

What do you think of pre-orders for books? They’re popping up everywhere now, although effectively the big publishers have always played the system by buying a lot of books on launch day to ensure their top authors recorded good enough sales figures to appear on the best-seller lists.

Being able to ‘pre-order’ ebooks has exactly the same effect. The book is publicised as being for sale on x date, pre-orders are accrued until then, and on launch day all the sales are allocated to that title. This is great if lots of people have pre-ordered the book - it might end up quite high in the charts.

What do readers think though? All of a sudden you're being promised goodies you can’t have. Is this a turn-off? Authors are being encouraged by publishers to plan months in advance, and to put books up for pre-order before they’re even written. It pays to watch the date it’ll be available before you pre-order anything in my opinion.

I’m a ’want-it-now’ person. Even finding my Kindle needs recharging before I can read is enough to make me twitchy. When I find one of my favourite authors has a book on a long pre-order I’m slightly resentful. It might be enough to stop me buying it at all. Yes, I know – cutting off my nose to spite my face…