{"id":698,"date":"2010-03-10T09:30:52","date_gmt":"2010-03-10T14:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbicmsblog.reedbusiness.com\/elogic_660000266\/2010\/03\/10\/competing-with-online-pre-orders\/"},"modified":"2010-03-10T09:30:52","modified_gmt":"2010-03-10T14:30:52","slug":"competing-with-online-pre-orders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=698","title":{"rendered":"Competing with Online Pre-Orders"},"content":{"rendered":"

We all know that this summer’s big book will be the third and final book in the\u00a0Hunger Games\u00a0series,\u00a0Mockingjay<\/em>. The release date is five months away and already the price wars have begun for pre-orders at the online retailers. \u00a0All the big web stores are offering the book for pre-sale at discounts ranging from 44% to a whopping 53%, bringing the book to well below what any bookstore can purchase it for.
\nThis aggressive discounting brings up many emotions in me. Chief among them is despair. It’s hard to see the biggest book of the year, and one I cannot wait to read myself, being so deeply discounted seemingly everywhere I turn. \u00a0The second emotion is anger. Anger that once again indies are potentially going to get scooped by companies using the book that can make our year, as their loss leader, and in doing so is devaluing the work itself.
\nThe good thing about anger is it spurs action. I am so irritated by all the places I’m competing with that I’m just going to dig and fight for my little corner of the summer’s hot book. \u00a0Can I sell the book at 53% off? No. Can I sell it for 44% off? No, again. But I can offer my customers an easy way to order the book locally and save. For a book like\u00a0Mockingjay<\/em>\u00a0that had special orders for it ever since the week after\u00a0Catching Fire<\/em>\u00a0came out, I am offering a staggered pre-order discount for my customers.
\nHere’s what I’m going to do for fans of the series. If you pre-order and pre-pay for\u00a0Mockingjay<\/em>\u00a0anytime between now and April 30th you will save 35%, buy it between May 1st and May 31st you can save 30%, after that the discount goes down to 20% until the release date. \u00a0We’ve never had a staggered discount schedule for a hot book, but never have we had such aggressive competition from so many places.
\nBold signage at each register will alert people to this plan and hopefully, they will decide on the spot to pre-order their book with us. The more they pre-order, the better my cash flow is, and the better able I’ll be to know exactly how many\u00a0Mockingjays<\/em>\u00a0to order, because all the outlets for this book are making me really think about the size of my order. And having some pre-orders in the system will be a real guide for me and help me order smartly.
\nOne thing that we have going for us, that few of the web stores do, is that our party won’t be virtual. It will be live and loads of fun, and if you bought your book from us, there might be something extra special in it for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We all know that this summer’s big book will be the third and final book in the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay. The release date is five months away and already the price wars have begun for pre-orders at the online retailers.  All the big web stores are offering the book for pre-sale at discounts ranging from 44% to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}