For those of you who are not Canadian, we just had Thanksgiving this past weekend. I am both thankful and full.

Now… on to pre-orders.

In our last blog (How to Set up a Pre-Order for Your Book Part I), we worked through a simple process of setting up a pre-order with Ingram (and pointed to a way to do it through Amazon Advantage). Today, I want to walk through some of the pros and cons of setting up a pre-order with Ingram.

In the end, I think the pros far outweigh the cons.

Here are the pros to using Ingram for your pre-order:

1. Ingram is a major wholesale distributor

That’s what they do. They provide books for brick and mortar stores, online bookstores and libraries. Once your book is up and running with Ingram, they update their catalogs and all the stores around the world that work with Ingram (which is pretty much all of them) have access to your book. It will take the stores about 1-2 weeks sometimes to list it for sale, but your book will not only be available for pre-order through Amazon, but just about everywhere else in the world as well. Not to plug my book too much (I’m trying to use it as a current example), but if you do a search for it on anything from Barnes and Noble to Books-A-Million to Book Depository, Arestana III: The Harry Quest is listed as available for pre-order.

2. It’s simple.

That’s a biggie for me. I don’t want to follow a difficult, complicated process to get my book out there for pre-order. Ingram is easy to work with and… it works.

Here are the cons to using Ingram for your pre-order:

1. Slower Process

Ingram (as mentioned above), can take about 1-2 weeks to get your book out there to all the stores and for it to appear for pre-order sale online. Because of that, don’t try to set up your pre-order two weeks before the date it’s set to come out. 🙂 Set your pre-order up 6 weeks before and then you have some decent time.
Ingram also takes a day or two (sometimes) to approve your book. Keep that in mind as well.

2. You Need your own ISBN

This is not a con for using Ingram; this is a con for pre-orders.
Personally, I would recommend you get your own ISBNs whether or not you’re doing a pre-order (check out Reasons to Get Your Own ISBN). If you’re in a country that requires to purchase your ISBN, you might be able to buy them in bulk and save a LOT of money.

You’ll actually need your own ISBN whether you’re using Ingram or Amazon Advantage, so if you want a print pre-order, you’re going to have to shell out the money for an ISBN.

The good news is, your ISBN with Ingram will be the same as the ISBN on Amazon (because you’ll have purchased your own) and your transition from Ingram fulfilling your book to Amazon fulfilling your book will be seamless. As soon as your book is actually published on KDP (for Amazon), Amazon will stop fulfilling your order through Ingram and begin fulfilling your order through KDP (Amazon).

3. Pre-order sales will be fulfilled by Ingram (not Amazon)

This is a positive in the sense that you get to have a pre-order. It’s also a positive because of the quality of Ingram’s print (which tends to be slightly better than Amazon), but it does mean that your sales (which go through Ingram) are not going to affect your Amazon sales stats (as far as I’ve seen).

4. Royalties

Because Ingram has somewhat higher print costs, you may make a little less on each book sale. You can actually set the wholesale discount price with Ingram so you can set it where you want, but it will likely be slightly lower. Even so, you’ll find the lower royalties to be negligible (it’s not a huge difference).

So, here’s how the process would look:

1. Two months before your Book Release Date: Set up your book with Ingram, pick your “on-sale date” and publish your print and ebook.
2. Two months before Book Sale Date: Set up your print and ebook with KDP, but don’t publish your print book (only your ebook).
3. Two-Three weeks before your Book Release Date: Update your books (with any last minute corrections) on both Ingram and on KDP, but again, don’t hit publish on your print book.
4. On the day your book comes out (or a few hours before), hit publish on your print book with KDP and KDP will approve it for sale.

Okay, in the end, making use of Ingram to set up a pre-order is probably the best way to go. You just set up your book with them, set the publishing date and away you go. Your book will then simply appear on Amazon for pre-order within a couple weeks.

I hope you have benefited from these blogs. I’d love to hear about your experience with Ingram.

Shawn