Pre-order Update

As promised, a quick update on pre-orders of The Crossover Gene.

The pre-order page went live on 8/15, so it’s been up for a little more than two weeks. In that time I’ve received 23 pre-orders.

The first batch came after I emailed my list. Of the 64 people emailed, 40 opened the email and 10 clicked the link. That’s a 62.5% open rate and a 15.6% click rate.

Compare that to my last email campaign that went to 45 people with a 71% open rate and a 46.7% click rate. That email featured the availability of my second Badlands novel.

I’m not surprised by the lower open and click rate on Crossover, because Badlands is my best selling series. I had readers waiting for it. Crossover  doesn’t have as big of a built-in audience. It’s not exactly in the same vein as the Badlands books either. I expected the click-through rate to be lower for this one. This book is going to have to find its audience.

For the next week The Crossover Gene picked up pre-orders here and there, at a very slow rate. However, on August 28th, a writer friend of mine who’d clicked the “Like” button on my Amazon writer page said that he’d received an email notifying him of the new release. (We help each other out like that. 🙂 ) I think that email must have gone to quite a few people because 12 orders came in over the next few days (click to enlarge).

That gave me a nice little bump. The book will be on pre-order for five more weeks, so that gives it some time to collect more orders. Should be a nice little opening day on 10/10 when it goes live.

That’s also when I’ll change its price back to the normal $4.99 (it’s on pre-order for $2.99–40% off).

So far I’m pretty happy with the pre-order option. I’m planning on doing it with my next book too, along with the same discount structure.

I’ll update again as we get further into it, but two weeks in this is where it stands.

Well, I Had a Launch Strategy…

The best laid plans of mice and men, eh? As soon as I had a launch strategy planned for The Crossover Gene, Amazon goes and gives us pre-order buttons!

So what’s changed from my original plan? Initially I planned to launch with a Kindle Countdown deal (one that allowed me to price under $2.99 and still earn 70%). That’s not available on a pre-order (at least I didn’t see it as an option).

Instead, I decide to set the book at $2.99 for the pre-order period. The book will be available for pre-order until October 10th, after which it’ll go live in the Kindle store and everyone who pre-ordered will get the book pushed to their Kindles.

Amazon requires a rough draft to be uploaded for pre-orders, so I pushed up the version I sent to my editor. The final version won’t change much, mostly just typos and such. I have to have the final version uploaded by 9/30 (Amazon forces a 10 day cushion before they release). This gives my editor and proofreader time to get the book finished and me time to go over it one last time before publishing.

Oh, and if I miss my date? Well, I’m no longer allowed to do pre-releases for a year. Amazon really wants me to make that date (and so do I).

Since the book will be available for pre-order over the next six weeks, I’m going to raise the price to $4.99 on October 10th. This gives my list and loyal fans plenty of time to buy in at 40% off. I also noted the discounted price in the product description too. Kind of my own Countdown deal, advising customers to buy now while they can get it for 40% off. We’ll see how that works.

I’m also going to post a link to the pre-order page on the “Coming Soon” section of my website.

As far as my mailing list goes, I’m going to email my mailing list the moment the pre-order page is live. They’re always the first to know of my new releases (though pre-orders does change the game a bit).

I’ll update this blog again once the book goes live (and maybe before, if anything notable happens). Check back for more.