My Personal Pre-Pre-Order Journey!
I have had a lot of people reach out asking questions on my journey for my pre-pre-order so I decided to write a blogpost on it :))
First of all - My pre-pre-order was only successful because of the amazing people that purchased my book. If you participated in it- THANK YOU!! It meant the world to me, and got my writing career set up in a way that I never knew was possible. THANK YOU!!!
Okay now on to my journey before I gush this entire blogpost about my gratitude for those that have supported me…. <3
- Kickstarter vs. Website
This was one of the biggest questions I received. Why use your own website and not kickstarter?? Well…. I was going to use Kickstarter. Until I looked into Kickstarter more and realized that they took A LOT in fees. Don’t quote me, but by the time they took transaction and product fees it was around 20% of what you would make. I also didn’t LOVE that on Kickstarter you HAVE to reach your goal to even get your money…. It made it difficult to know what type of goal was realistic or not- and it TERRIFIED me that I would set a goal and put so much work into it knowing that I wouldn’t end up getting that money and those orders anyways.
The biggest reason I decided to go the route of my own website, was because I had already decided to sell them on my own website anyways vs sending people to amazon and other places. I wanted to be able to reward from my own work and to keep almost 100% of my own profit (I say almost because there are still transaction fees/etc). Especially with the audience I have, I didn’t want to only make 40% of the profit by sending everyone to Amazon. Amazon is great of course for MANY reasons, but I wanted to have my own way as well. I also have a LOT of experience with building my own website and knew that I could do it easily, and the idea of going live and packaging my own orders sounded VERY satisfying to me!!!
The downside of having your own website for pre-pre-orders/etc is that you have to continually pay for the website. This wasn’t an issue since I wanted my own website anyways, but if you plan to mainly send people to Amazon to purchase your book then Kickstarter may be the best option for you so that you don’t have to continually pay for the website until you ship your orders.
The other downside of having your own website is that you have to figure out all of the shipping and everything. I have a decent amount of experience with shipping- but NOT internationally. However, I had SOO many people say that they didn’t care the cost of shipping that they wanted my book with the sprayed edges and so I decided if people were that willing to pay the shipping then I would be willing to figure it out. I haven’t figured it out yet, and decided that it was a later problem for me- but I got it set up enough that people would be able to order through my website. For this I simply used the shipping integration connected with Shopify, because I didn’t want to mess with the other options and didn’t have the time to figure it all out.
- Applications/Integrations I used
DONATION & SALES GOAL BAR:
A big thing for me was that I wanted my website to FEEL like a Kickstarter. What I mean by that is having goals/tiers/etc! So I found an integration through shopify that showed the “Goals” and the # of $$ reached!! Here is an example of the bar on my website. The app I used for this was called “Donation and Sales Goal Bar”. I tried some other options but they all were over $30/month and still didn’t work like how I had wanted it to. This integration is only $10/mo. And did exactly what I wanted it to. It gave the satisfaction I wanted customers to have when they made a purchase and for them to physically see how close we were to reaching the next goal (Similar to Kickstarter)
VITALS:
I LOVE vitals. I have used it for other websites but it has all of the integrations you need for your website. It is around $30/month, but in my first 3 weeks of my pre-pre-order it has helped me get an additional $578. So I would say that it is worth it! At least during your heavy launches.
The biggest parts I used for Vitals:
- Upsells- I had an upsell at checkout to add on the e-book for a discounted price. For my highest tier with my annotated copies of my books I also had an upsell to add an additional (unannotated copy) for a cheaper price as well.
- The “pre-order” button. As far as I know, shopify didn’t necessarily offer a “pre-order button” what I mean by this is that instead of it saying “add to cart” like it normally would it says “Pre-order”. That way it was a reminder to customers that they were preordering and that they wouldn’t receive it right away. I believe that this has helped minimize any questions.
- Product descriptions tabs- I was able to have a separate tab on each product page where they could read my first chapter, see the rewards, and even see my shipping policies.
- Countdown timer- I wanted this so everyone knew EXACTLY when my pre-pre-order was ending so that there was no questions or no one frustrated because of different time zones/ etc!
- Tiers
For my pre-order like I mentioned - I wanted it to FEEL like a kickstarter. So something I took from this was the idea of “tiers”. What this meant was that I started low and then would have bigger packages that offered more things. I also had some of those packages carry “exclusive items” to incentivize everyone to purchase the higher packages. Here are the examples of the packages that I offered please note that I offered FREE shipping to the US:
Tier 1: I offered different amount types for them to be able to support me
Tier 2: Ebook 
Tier 3: hardcover book 
Tier 4: Signed hardcovers (At a discounted price)
Tier 5: Signed hardcover, bookmark, sticker sheet, and stickers
Tier 6: Signed hardcover, bookmark, sticker sheets, art prints, and page overlays
Tier 7: Signed hardcover, bookmark, sticker sheet, art prints, page overlays, and exclusive edition T-shirt that was gone forever after the preorder ended!
Tier 8: Signed hardcover, bookmark, sticker sheet, art prints, page overlays, and exclusive edition T-shirt and Sweatshirt that were gone forever after the preorder ended!
Tier 9: Signed hardcover (Hand annotated by me), bookmark, sticker sheet, art prints, page overlays, and exclusive edition T-shirt and sweatshirt that were gone forever after the preorder ended!
- Rewards
I think rewards are also an important part of a “pre-pre-order”. It helped incentivize the preorders and it also gave benefits to those that were supporting me during the early stages of my book.
I had a hefty list of “automatic rewards” for those that purchased during the pre-pre-order that were outside of my “goal rewards”.
These rewards included:
- Signed hardcovers
- Exclusive Q&A with me
- Priority shipping (Their orders were guaranteed to ship first)
Here were the rewards I offered:
Original Goal: $6,000
$10,000- Sprayed edges
$15,000- All orders received an additional 3 exclusive chapters as a digital file
$20,000- All physical orders will get a pamphlet of the dragon language (Digital orders will receive this as a digital file)
$30,000-All physical orders will receive an additional page overlay of a scene
$40,000-All physical orders will receive a sticker sheet of the customized 12 elemental dragons
- Marketing:
To help with my marketing during the pre-pre-order I would repost anytime anyone shared to their story that they ordered and about everytime we passed $1,000 a would post an update on my story. I also had a few reels where I would have the viewers comment “link” and then I would personally send them the link to my website. I actually had a few videos blow up that did this. At first I didn’t want to “bug” my audience about ordering, but then I found that people WANTED to know. Especially during the pre-pre-order when there are SO many benefits to ordering during that timeframe.
- Other info:
I did my pre-pre-order the moment that I had the marketing materials and my website set up. My audience didn’t get a real warning besides me saying “its coming” for a month or so before.
I also did my pre-pre-order for 1 month and then opened it as the regular preorder after
That was everything that I could think of. If you have any questions that were not answered please let me know and I am happy to update this blog with additional bullet points adding to a “Q&A” on this topic! :)) Hope this helps!! Happy preorders for your book!!!
