Over the course of the last week or so I’ve been teasing a top secret aspect to the release of The Rise of the Red Shadow. Well, the time has come to finally let the cat out of the bag.
For the first time ever, The Rise of the Red Shadow is available for pre-order in Apple’s iBookstore!
That little orange dot says pre-order. Huzzah!
It’s true, see for yourself! This is a huge opportunity for any number of reasons. Apple is a major retailer. They represent a large and growing portion of my income for the books. Getting the opportunity to pre-order with them is something that would have been unthinkable for an indie author a few years ago. This is an option that was formerly available only to traditional publishers.
If you are anything like I was a few weeks ago, you might wonder what value pre-odering has for the author. As a consumer I’ve pre-ordered things in the past just to make sure I could get them (if they were hot items and in limited supply) or to have them as early as possible (if they were digital), so I understand what a reader gets out of the pre-ordering process. What does the author get, other than the satisfaction of giving fans another thing they might want?
It turns out, bunches. Way back when The Book of Deacon first started gaining traction, one of the things that really drove sales and got people to notice the book was its position on the Amazon best seller lists. The Book of Deacon spent a fair amount of time at or near the top of the free list, and its sequels got as high as the top ten for certain genre lists. When you show up on a best seller list of any kind, more people see you, and the more people who see you, the more likely they are to give your books a try. Where do pre-orders fit in? Every pre-order counts as a day one sale. That means if over the course of the next few weeks one thousand of you pre-order on Apple, it has the same effect as one thousand people buying my book as soon as it becomes available. That could earn me a place on the best sellers list, and all of the prestige and trickle-down success that comes with it.
My thanks and gratitude go out to Smashwords and Apple for making this happen, and to all of you for the interest and enthusiasm in my writing that gave them the confidence to give me this opportunity.
Thanks, everyone!
UPDATE: The Rise of the Red Shadow is now available for pre-order on Kobo!
UPDATE 2: The Rise of the Red Shadow is now available for pre-order on Barnes and Noble!