SFA 043 – Book Advances, White-Listing Requests for Newsletters, and Pre-Orders Pt 2

On this week’s show, Jo, Andrea, and Lindsay finished answering listener questions on pre-orders after discussing some information on book advances from the #publishingpaidme hashtag on Twitter. They also shared a few tips on Amazon ads and discussed asking newsletter subscribers to white-list your address in welcome emails.
Book advances:
We quoted from NK Nemisin’s Twitter thread on the topic (you can read it in full here and check out her books and website here). The discussion came out of the #publishingpaidme thread on Twitter, in which white and PoC authors shared their advances in the spirit of transparency. She mentioned “Comping White,” an article in the Las Angeles Review of Books.
For those looking for some of the advance numbers, you can check out this article and a big public document put together from the thread:
PublishingPaidMe: Authors Share Their Advances To Expose Racial Disparities
A big compilation of the data in a Google Spreadsheet.
White-listing:
Here’s David Gaughran’s example of a white-list page to explain to your subscribers how to white list your email address so that they’re more likely to receive your newsletter announcements. For those of you doing this, has it made a noticeable difference in deliverability of emails?
Questions on Pre-Orders:
Phoenix: Definitely interested in hearing what successful ad strategies are used. How would a new author advertise a rapid release? What would be the first book’s ad timing on the preorder and would it basically be used to set the book in the desired genre categories? Would pre-orders for the following books go live on the release date of the previous book?
Phoenix: How would the series covering multiple genres change things? I.e. All books are YA, book 1 is sci-fi adventure, book 2 is space opera with a mix of adventure and mystery and book 3 is space opera mixed with war.
Shannon: How do you market a pre-order that isn’t a first in series? I had the third book in a series release Monday. I didn’t do much for it and I’m sure I should have.
Robert: Mine would be do you ever launch a book or series when you see another author is going to cause an influx in your genre?
Sara: I’m releasing my next series a book every other month. Do you stagger the pre-orders so only two are out at a time (the one releasing next and the following one) or do you put up more than that? Also, how do you build excitement to your newsletter without being pushy?
Kellie: Does genre matter in making pre-order choices?
Jamie: When would you recommend NOT doing a preorder?
Megg: Has anyone done a pre-order at free? Is this a good strategy for a first-in-series, rapid release schedule?
Fatima: What kind of marketing/advertising do you do for the preorder? Do you have a budget for advertising a preorder? Do you set expectations? (i.e. I want X preorders)
Fatima: I love hearing data. What is the highest number of preorders you’ve gotten and what was your Amazon rank when the book launched? Is there a correlation between your most successful series & number of preorders you’ve gotten? What price point have you had most preorders at?
Nicholi: Is it best practice to have a preorder to the 2nd book, to ensure there’s a link in the back of book 1? Given a 60+ day release gap.
Nicholi: Does a preorder that sells worse than a normal release result in an overall dragged down sales rank, due to under performance of sales history? (rolling sales rank weighted)
Jon: Similarly, is it worth putting up a second-book preorder with a far-off on-sale date and then pushing it up once the release date is finalized?
Richard: How do you get BookBub to blast their lists with the pre-order?
E. M.: I’d be curious if you have any data contrasting authors or series that never do preorder versus those that do. I haven’t done a preorder since maybe 2015 myself, and while my results haven’t been anything special, that’s true for most authors:-)
Rhiannon: I am curious if more people are skipping preorders with Amazon for the time being because of all the glitches they are having right now.
Rebekah: Has anyone looked at the failure rate, and how badly does an Amazon snafu affect a release?
Sean: Any drawbacks? Things you hate about preorders?
Nathan: I know pre-orders allow a book to show longer than the usual 30 days in the hot new releases for a genre, but does anyone know how valuable this is?