Lauren: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. Today we're going to be talking about something that from a consumer perspective works on me 95% of the time, so it'll be fun to talk about it from a marketing and sales perspective for a little while. And that is preorder campaigns and how to use a preorder campaign effectively to maximize your book sales and grow your audience.

Matt: I thought for sure you'd say something Taylor Swift oriented when you say it works 95% of the time on you. 

Lauren: Oh, well, I mean, it definitely does in that case, because - 

Matt: But you went broader with it. Gotcha. 

Lauren: For sure. But I mean, specifically for books, like I am - 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: I'm a real sucker when it comes to a good preorder campaign for a book. For sure. 

I like a preorder campaign only because I know what it does for the author. 

Lauren: Exactly. That is actually, genuinely

Matt: Otherwise, I can wait. Like there's, I don't know. I'm a little less like you in the sense of the anticipation that builds for me with a, with a book. I mean, Grady Hendrix’ new book dropped recently, and while I was aware of it and I was excited for it to come out, I didn't see anything about a preorder, if there was one. And if there was one, I may or may not have done the preorder, but I definitely would go get the book now that it's out. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But if I know it's an indie author I'm way more inclined to support a preorder campaign, just because I know what it does for them. And so I'm assuming that's part of what we'll talk about today. 

Lauren: Oh, yeah, for sure it is. But yeah, I know it's a fine line for me of I'm very susceptible to a preorder campaign, especially when it includes some kind of incentive to preorder the book, which we will talk about in this episode as well. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I'm also very picky about the condition of my books. I want - I will go - I absolutely, if I'm gonna go to Barnes & Noble and buy a book, if there's a stack of ten books on a table I will go through all ten of them and pick the one that I deemed to be the best. Quote unquote.

Matt: I have definitely done that on occasion.

Lauren: Yeah. So it's a fine line of… 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Preorder campaigns, but also wanting to get - but if it's something that, it's like an indie author or somebody that I know I'm not going to be, it's unlikely that their book will be in major, even traditionally published books that are like small and niche enough -

Matt: Sure, yeah. 

Lauren: - that they're probably not going to be in Barnes & Noble on day one. I will go ahead and make sure that I preorder in advance, because I’m always a sucker for those. And also because like Matt immediately started to allude to, it's very beneficial for authors in a variety of different ways. 

Matt: Yeah, definitely. 

Lauren: Yeah. Which I guess we can jump right in and get to that, unless you had anything else you wanted to start with. 

Matt: No. 

Lauren: No? Okay, great. 

Matt: Wait. No. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: No, let's go. 

Lauren: All right. 

[3:13]

Lauren: So, yeah, I mean, let's just jump right into talking about it. If you're not already aware of this, the prelaunch - I would argue - is the most valuable window of time for marketing your book.

Matt: I agree.

Lauren: Yeah

Matt: Yeah, definitely. And I think what’s sad is that, even to this day, no matter how many people talk about it - and now, obviously there’s the caveat that it’s different for everybody. But, for the most part, one of the constants that you can count on is that window of premarketing intention that is open and up for grabs if you do it right. But so many people just don’t. Like they, for whatever reason, they still think that marketing starts at launch

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Or marketing starts the week before launch. Like hey I’m launching next week! You're already way behind the curve if that's when you're starting your marketing, 

Lauren: Way behind the curve. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I can't tell you the number of times that I've had conversations with authors, that they've come up to me and said something along the lines of, okay, so I published my book now, how do I start marketing it? And I just, I'm just like. Uh…

Matt: Well, it's also -  

Lauren: You go back in time six to eight weeks? 

Matt: Yeah. You got a DeLorean that you can crank up? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Let's get that thing up to 88 gigawatts or gigawatts or whatever it is. But I think the reality of it is if you implement the prelaunch marketing stages and everybody's outline of how you do this is different. But what's important is that you do it. And if you do it, it is so much easier to market your book prelaunch. And the further out you start, for the most part, the easier it gets to market it. And the cheaper it is to market the book, by the way. 

So the sooner you start talking to people about this book - I would start when you're 50% of the way done writing it. Pull people in, start talking about it on your social media channels, in your email newsletters, at events, with friends, with peers. The more you get the word out that you've got this next book in the works, it just gets easier to market it as you get closer and closer to launch. And for the most part, incrementally cheaper. 

What happens is if you start marketing at launch or postlaunch, now you're behind the eight ball, so you're trying to do everything now, now, now, now, now. And to get now results means you need to spend now money, and now money is a lot more expensive than premature money or long-term investments, right? 

So if you need to spend money now to make money in book sales now, that is a lot more costly than if you started way earlier with a lot of organic and earned media, right? Talking to your audiences and earning audiences outside of that for free, as well as sprinkling in on a little bit of money here and there, you're gonna be way better set up for launch day than if at launch day you're opening that checkbook and starting to freak out and go, oh, I gotta tell people about my launch. Get ready to write a lot of checks. 

Lauren: Yeah. Literally and figuratively, I think. 

Matt: For those of you listening that are, you know, a lot younger than me, a check is something we used to use.

Lauren: Oh no. 

Matt: It's attached to your bank account by a string of numbers and you could write on this piece of paper called a check and then you exchange that for goods and services, assuming that the business and or organization would take checks and then that check would get deposited in their bank account. The money would be withdrawn from your account in about three days or so. It used to get a lot of us older folks in trouble sometimes too. But anyways.

Lauren: I do just want to be clear as you're looking at me, as you're explaining what a check is - 

Matt: Yes, I am. 

Lauren: I do know what a check is. 

Matt: Well, you know, your dad was also in the finance industry, right?

Lauren: I do have a checkbook still to this day in my apartment.

Matt: Is it yours? 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Oh, okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I mostly just use it for easy reference from my routing number when I'm - 

Matt: Oh my goodness. 

Lauren: - setting up direct deposit - 

Matt: Okay.

Lauren: - but I still have one. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: But yes, no, you're completely correct. And literally and figuratively writing checks -

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - in that window of time because there's going to be a lot to do. But all of that is to say, if you started listening to this episode and you're like, you guys said this is going to be an episode about preorder campaigns and then immediately started talking about prelaunch marketing…

Matt: Well, I mean, it's it's six in one half a dozen in the other, really. 

Lauren: Right. My point there - and Matt, I'm assuming, also his implied point - is that if you're going to put all of this effort into your prelaunch marketing, the best thing that you can do for yourself is be ready to take preorders and sales as you are doing that prelaunch marketing and not waiting until your book is available. Because it is great to build up a lot of buzz and a lot of hype about your book, six weeks out, eight weeks out, three months out, whatever it is. 

But you want to make sure that people are going to buy your book when it comes out. It's a lot harder to bring people back to your store. If you're doing all this really good prelaunch marketing and you're only CTA in that prelaunch marketing is add my book on Goodreads, or add it to your calendar and remember that it's going to come out on this date in three months and go buy it then, you could have a really successful by metric standards prelaunch campaign and still not sell copies of your book when launch day actually happens. 

Matt: Yeah, or sell very minimal copies. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Absolutely. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: I mean, any amount of marketing work is going to net some sales. But there's a big difference between, you know, five sales and 500 sales or 5,000 sales. 

Lauren: Bookbub did a survey a couple of years ago about how authors use preorders. I have this survey linked in the show notes if you want to check it out, but they did say 85% of authors have tried a preorder campaign and 72% of those were self-published authors. So clearly this is a popular marketing tactic. And I would have to assume that it's worked - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - if that many people are still doing it or trying it or using it as a strategy. 

Matt: Yeah, I think again, and we'll get into this, there's a lot of reasons why you would do a preorder and for indie authors specifically, you know, one of the biggest reasons they do it, at least the ones we talked to, is quite frankly to generate some upfront money to go towards the completion of the book. 

But it's also widely used for other reasons like part of a marketing strategy, part of a particular strategy to game the bestseller lists, potentially, depending on what you're selling. There's a lot of other reasons too. But I think, you know, when you bring up the Bookbub survey and other surveys out there by other publishing industry organizations or other peers in the industry, a lot of it is, again, focused on fiction authors and a lot of them are doing it to get some of that money up front so they can pay for the completion of that book, so they can pay for the final proofread and the final design and layout and get that stuff off to print.

Lauren: Although that's not, that's not to say that this isn't equally applicable to nonfiction authors.

Matt: No, for sure. 

Lauren: Preorder - preorder campaigns - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - and prelaunch marketing are essential for all - not essential, but are great strategies for any and all genres of book. 

Matt: Yeah. I think when you talk about fiction versus nonfiction, all you're really going to do is reorder the priorities to which somebody would actually be doing a preorder, why they would be doing it. Like for, on the fiction side, I think the priorities for why they would do a preorder, most of the people we talk to again on the fiction side, it's to get some money upfront for finishing the book and or covering the costs of other things related to that book, like some premarketing efforts and things like that. And then the list goes down in order of other reasons why they're doing the preorder. 

If you look at nonfiction, most of the time that a nonfiction author, especially a nonfiction indie author is preordering or setting up a preorder campaign, it's more for marketing reasons. And they're using that as a reason to get earned media placements, right? Like to be invited on a podcast, or onto a stage to talk, or to get some extra social media coverage for free from somebody else, so. Yes, I think in both major genres fiction versus nonfiction, everybody's doing preorders for the most part, the number one reason why they're doing them, I think, just flips depending on which genre you're in. 

Lauren: Yeah, that's fair. 

Matt: But I think everybody should be doing it first and foremost as a marketing tactic.

Lauren: I agree with that. I agree with that. I think this is something that if you're not already doing it, you absolutely should be - at the very least try it. 

Matt: I'm always thrown when you say you agree with me. So kind of I have to stop for a second. 

Lauren: Well, not only do I agree with you, but you just immediately knocked out two of the four points in the first section of my outline. 

Matt: Does that mean we can leave now? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: No? 

Lauren: No. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: You got to give me at least twenty more minutes. 

Matt: Twenty more minutes? 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: I can talk for twenty more minutes.

Lauren: Oh, I don't doubt that.

Matt: There's a lot of good stuff on TV these days that I could talk about. 

Lauren: There's a lot of good stuff in this outline. 

Matt: Okay, 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Let me read this outline. You can keep talking. I'll read the outline. 

[11:33] 

Lauren: So, you know, just to cover the basics of how a preorder campaign can help your book launch. Matt just shared two of them right now. The first one being helping to fund your production costs by crowdsourcing your prelaunch campaign using something like a Kickstarter campaign. We've done a whole episode on this, so I don't think we really need to dive too deeply. I'm sure it'll come up in conversation in the course of this episode, but I don't want to dive too deeply into this. So just go listen to episode number 19 for the specifics about how to use a Kickstarter campaign as a prelaunch campaign.

Matt: Kickstarter or other, yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah yeah yeah. 

Matt: Like some of you may already have a newsletter subscription or a Patreon or things like that. But you know, again, Kickstarter being the most popular right now and probably one of the easier ways to do it. But yeah, I think in general, we're talking about a particular type of upfront crowdfunding. Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah, sorry. A Kickstarter campaign in the same way that we talk about putting on a bandaid instead of a bandage. It's the - 

Matt: Yes. Okay. 

Lauren: You know what I mean? 

All right. Yeah. Nope. 

Lauren: How I still mapquest directions - 

Matt: I’m sure Kickstarter appreciates that. 

Lauren: - even though Mapquest died a long time ago. 

Matt: Shout out Kickstarter. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But everybody else too. Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. Yes. 

Matt: But we do like Kickstarter. 

Lauren: Yes. Yes we do. But yeah, no, your, your point is completely valid. Any kind of crowd-sourced campaign. 

Matt: Bandaid versus bandage. I'll have to remember that one. Okay. 

Lauren: You know what I mean though, right? 

Matt: No, 100%. 

Lauren: Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. 100%. 

Lauren: Yeah. But then the other thing that you said right away too, just there was the idea of using your preorder campaign and your prelaunch marketing efforts to help you secure earned promotion.

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Which is a great way, especially if you have a very successful campaign. If you do something interesting, if you have kind of a unique or unusual or landmark successful preorder campaign, that is a great reason to try to get earned media opportunities, whether it's to have coverage from… if you have a really successful Kickstarter campaign and Kickstarter wants to use you as a case study, or you did something really cool in your local community as a part of your preorder campaign and a local newspaper wants to write an article about it, or you did something really cool for your preorder campaign and you pitch yourself to be on a podcast for indie authors where you want to talk about how you found success doing this really cool thing and you want to try that again, and also by the way you’ve got this new book coming out that while everyone is listening to this, they should totally go by because they can preorder it right now.

Matt: I think that, and Lauren will link to this in the show notes too, we did an episode on, you know, how to secure earned media, like some of the actual steps and things you should do, building out a spreadsheet of contacts, all those things, but what you're saying is correct. What I would add to that though is you just threw out a lot of sort of higher level types of earned media activities that I don't think everybody would be comfortable saying, yeah, I'm going to be like this number one Kickstarter campaign. 

Like, you can shoot lower though. And by lower, I just mean it's a lot less intimidating, especially for early stage indie authors and creators to again, just create a list of like a lot of their favorite podcasts or podcasts that deal with, you know, specific type of genre or field that they're writing about. And then some social media channels and followers, and then reach out to them first and build up from there. Because we run a podcast, there are a lot of podcasts out there. They're always looking for content to talk about. Like you and I all the time, like, okay let's play in the next five episodes. It usually falls on you because I don't want anything to do with it, but - 

Lauren: Yeah, all these episode topics are my fault. Unless you like them, and then they were all my idea. 

Matt: I like to just show up and start talking. So this is why sometimes you'll see that I haven't looked at the outline yet. But the same for social media channels, though, right? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Like right now, there's a struggle for people to fill airtime, dead space, with content that they feel is valuable. And sometimes what you're getting is content that's not valuable because they're just trying to put content out. If you can give them a reason to generate more content, of course, they're going to want to talk to you and then that's going to benefit you because you get in front of their audience. So don't be afraid to, to start building that list of people, places, organizations, channels, podcasts that you might want to reach out to at any end of that spectrum in terms of, you know, just how big and popular the channel is versus… a podcast could maybe have a thousand listeners. Who cares? If one hundred of them buy your book, great. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: That's a success story. 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: You know, it could have five million listeners and you might only get a hundred book sales of that. I mean, so don't necessarily let these numbers intimidate you or stop you from reaching out, I think, was my point.

Lauren: Yeah. Yes.

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yes, totally agree with that, absolutely. 

Matt: But there's a whole episode on that. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Go find that. Listen to that. Maybe I read the outline on that one. Maybe not, but I'm sure it's a decent episode. 

Lauren: It was one of our best episodes - 

Oh, that's right. You just said that early. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: It was one of our most listened to episodes in 2024. 

Matt: Perfect. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: We love earned media. 

Lauren: Yeah, we do. 

[16:13]

Lauren: Another thing that your preorder campaign can be good for is gauging interest in the overall book and topic and the details of all those things. So if you're trying to get an idea from your audience about… I've only, historically I've only ever published ebooks, is it worth it for me to try to do a print book on this? If I'm doing a print book, should I stick to just paperback or would people be interested in a hardcover too? Is there any interest in an audiobook? Is there any interest in anything else related to this? I don't know. 

If there's anything that you're trying to get a better understanding, you don't have to play the guessing game of trying to figure out what your audience is interested in. If you have a preorder campaign where you have the opportunity for people to tell you what they're interested in by literally putting their money where their mouth is, in that case, you can get a better idea of what your fans are interested in and what they're looking for from you.

Matt: Yeah, and if you are selling direct, which you know, we hope you are and primarily that's what we're talking about, obviously. 

Lauren: Yeah, we'll get to that, but that is a big part of the preorder. 

Matt: Yeah. A lot of this is extremely relevant because you could create a preorder campaign tied directly to your store and your platform. You could put multiple formats up there like Lauren is talking about, and really again, use that data to gauge just how heavily you want to invest in those particular formats when you actually launch or how you might want to launch those formats. 

Which we've talked about in other episodes and how you would strategize format launching, right? So launching one format, waiting three months, rolling out another format, waiting six months to keep that sales life cycle strong. Versus going to market with all formats immediately and your sales are great for a couple of months, if you're lucky, and then they just drop, because you've got nothing else to introduce into the market around that title necessarily.

So it's a great opportunity to collect data intent around purchases, types of formats wanted. It's just, you know, again, another way to create that two way conversation with your fans and buyers and readers, so. Yeah. 

[18:16] 

Lauren: Lastly, but definitely not least for sure, is just the idea of again, like I said at the beginning, just making sure that you are supporting your prelaunch efforts. That's what the preorder campaign is so good for. I mean, anecdotally, I cannot tell you the number of times that I've seen something that I've been like, oh, that looks really cool. I would like to read that, or watch that, or buy that, or have that thing. And it's not available yet at the time that I've seen the ad for it. And because I have the memory of a flea, by the time it comes available, I have forgotten about its existence. And if it doesn't come across my social media, or my awareness, or a Goodreads recommendation, or something ever again, it doesn't matter how cool it sounded back in the day. I will probably never buy it or never engage with it or never read it or whatever because I forgot about it. 

Matt: Yeah. A couple of just quick tips too, when you're actually setting up your preorder Obviously, you're gonna want to have a CTA that allows them to purchase the book. Use preorder language, too, though. So avoid terms like buy now, cop this book now, like whatever. Like, make sure it says preorder now. 

Because the one drawback to a preorder, and we hear this from people all the time, is it never fails you're always gonna have at least one person, if not a few, who do the preorder, and a few days later or a week later, they're like, hey, haven't got a shipping update yet, where’s my book? They forget that it was a preorder, so the more opportunities you can, you know what I mean, subtly remind people this is a preorder. 

This is a preorder because you know, typically the average time is a thirty-day window for a preorder, right? But you might see preorder windows go a little bit longer, maybe a little bit shorter. But at the end of the day, thirty days is, is roughly the average and, thirty days is a pretty easy amount of time to forget something, so the more you can remind them that this was a preorder and it's gonna be rolling out on this date, right, or things like that, the less you'll have to deal with some of those annoying little emails or DMs or things like, hey, where's my book? Where's - oh, this was a preorder, remember? 

So again, using language on your site, on your CTAs, inside of your store, wherever else you're at, that says preorder this now, or don't get left out preorder now, or be the first preorder this book now. Always using terminology that denotes this is a preorder. And then your follow-up emails that might go out, right, afterwards confirming that preorder. And then you probably want to send some sort of a communication a week or two before launch to get them hyped up again. Hey, just a reminder, you preordered this book. It is rolling out ten days from now. Would love if you gave it a little bit of attention on social media. Be watching that mailbox. It's coming.

Lauren: Yeah, and these are all things that are interconnected too with this idea, because like the whole - one of the benefits of a preorder campaign is if you are selling your book directly from your own website, and that's how you're doing your preorders, and we'll get into that in a minute, this is your opportunity to collect email addresses from your customer, which is then an opportunity to remarket to them when you are talking to them, whether it's a few weeks down the road to say, hey, reminder, the book's coming out soon, or reaching out to them after the book has come out and saying, hey, hope you got your copy, hope you loved it, would love a review if you've already read it, shout out on social media, something like that. 

Or if it's a book that has any other related content to it, whether it's other books that are related to it or other products in your store that are related to it, this is a remarketing opportunity. Like these are all part and parcel of the marketing strategy that you're putting together for this book launch. But yeah, to Matt's point, you do want to set expectations for when your book is going to arrive for people. You do… this is something that we've argued about before, but I'm going to say here that if you are going to do a preorder campaign, you have to have a launch date. If you are going to do a preorder campaign and that's not to say - 

Matt: Wait, what did we argue about there? 

Lauren: You - 

Matt: Cause I don't disagree with that. 

Lauren: Well, you've argued about needing a launch date in general.

Matt: Oh. 

Lauren: In the past. 

Matt: Well, that's different. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But I mean, yeah, if you're at the point now where you're, you're selling somebody something, you're taking money from somebody, you absolutely should have a date. Now, not to take you off topic. But just as a side note, it's okay if that date has to move. 

Lauren: Yes. Absolutely. 

Matt: Just keep that in mind. But otherwise, we can get back on topic now. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: But yeah, you should have a date. Of course. 

Lauren: No, I think that's on topic

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: For sure. Especially because, you know, depending on what type of preorder campaign you're doing, if you are doing a Kickstarter campaign where you're using your preorder sales to fund the last little bit of your book production, then you might be pushing it a little further away from your launch date. So you might find yourself in a position where you're like, oh, you know, like unforeseen circumstances and I have to push the launch date back a couple of weeks. That's okay. That is, that is okay. You just have to be very communicative with your audience and specifically with the people that already bought your book. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And I would strongly recommend that you do have a very specific launch date. At the very least a month and a year, you know? Like with the Kickstarter campaign, even if I say like, I'm doing a Kickstarter campaign now for a book that I have planned to come out in November of 2025. That's pretty far down the road, all things considered, but it still is setting the expectation of this book is going to come out in a few months, before the end of this year. It's not going to be next week. You're not going to have the book in hand next week, but you will have the book this year.

Matt: Well they’re definitely not going to have your book in hand next week. 

Lauren: No, they're not. No, they're definitely not. I think that that's reasonable. And I completely agree with Matt that, you know, if something happens and you need to push your launch date back, that's okay, too. But I do think that you need to have a date. 

Matt: What percentage of completion do you think you're at with your book? 

Lauren: Well, so the problem - 

Matt: And I know you have multiple, so pick the one where you're closest to complete. 

Lauren: Okay, so well, the problem is that I did finish a first - I finished a full draft of it. And I got to the end of the draft and I said, well, that's good. Unfortunately, I don't want to write YA anymore. I want this to be adult romance instead of YA romance. So I had to scrap the entire draft and start it back over from the beginning and adjust everything so that it's adult instead of YA. So. 

Matt: So the original question was what percentage complete do you think you are of your book? 

Lauren: Ten. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: Fifteen. Not even close. 

Matt: Wow. 

Lauren: I don't know, it's hard to judge. 

Matt: Why would you scrap the whole genre to begin with? 

Lauren: I don't... 

Matt: Nevermind. Where are we at? 

Lauren: Yeah, okay. 

Matt: Let's talk about how to do actual preorder campaigns. 

Lauren: Yes. Yes. Oh, actually I did wanna add one more thing to the timeline thing, just for the date. Thirty days. 

Matt: Anybody out there wanna be Lauren's accountability buddy? Or accountability, how do you say it? 

Lauren: Accountabilibuddy, 

Matt: There you go. 

Lauren: But I hate that word.

Matt:  I do too, but that's, yeah. Okay, podcast@lulu.com to be Lauren's accountability buddy.

Lauren: I already have one. Her name is Shannon. 

Matt: Well, clearly Shannon's not - Shannon, what are you doing? Good night. Is Shannon a real person? 

Lauren: Shannon's my best friend. Leave her alone. 

Matt: I believe she's an AI model. 

Lauren: All right. 

Matt: Well, no, because then she’d just write it for you.

Lauren: She's busy writing her own book. It's fine. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: Anyway, timeline, Matt said thirty days out for a preorder campaign. The Bookbub survey that I looked at earlier actually said one to three months. So anywhere within that window. So you can do more than thirty days out if you want to. But I agree with Matt that probably thirty days before your launch date, so a month before your launch date is… 

Matt: I think that…

Lauren: But you can push that back a little further if you want to. 

Matt: I think this is one of those areas where industry statistics and knowledge isn't necessarily as applicable as maybe some consumer buying psychology is, right? Some buying patterns and habits and again for anything on preorder or anything in general really when you ask somebody to do something more than thirty days in advance, unless it's booking a cruise somewhere, you know, or something like that, like you're not going to get a good response. So if I put something up today that says, Hey, preorder my new book. It's coming out, it's launching in three months. I'm not going to get a very good response. You might get one or two friends and family trickling in. But if you throw it up there at thirty days before launch, there's a lot more likelihood that you're going to get more purchases and you're going to build some quicker buzz around it.But again, it's all preference. I do think the average is around thirty days from what we actually see happening. But I mean, the long and short of it is you can put whatever date you want. 

Lauren: Sure. 

Matt: One month, three months, six months, have at it. But I would pay more attention to some more of the consumer buying habits and trends there versus just what's going on in the publishing industry.

Lauren: Absolutely. And that is - to be completely fair with that. 

Matt: To be fair. 

Lauren: Traditional publishing prelaunch campaigns and preorder campaigns absolutely look different than indie author preorder campaigns. There's a lot of overlap, but they definitely look different. So don't base your model entirely off of a traditionally published book’s preorder campaign. 

[27:07]

Lauren: Let's get back to where Matt was trying to take us, which is the different ways to do a preorder campaign. So we've already kind of started talking about crowdsourced crowdfunded campaign. Let's dive into that just a little bit. You can use that crowdsourced campaign as a preorder campaign. Like you can use it obviously to fund your book production. If you want to do it earlier in the production process, that's totally viable to do. 

But you can also use it just as a preorder tool if you don't want to go with the other two options that we're going to talk about, you can just say like, hey, this book is going to be available in thirty days. This isn't one of those Kickstarter campaigns where we need to gauge interest before we even start the production on this and then who knows, a year from now you might get it. You can do a crowdsource campaign that, this is gonna have a hard and fast end thirty days from now, you're gonna get your book thirty days plus shipping time. 

[Letterkenny Video Clip] Don't say to be fair, I hate when people say to be fair. Well to be fair...

Matt: I just needed you to - you won't watch it on your own. So I had to.

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: Alright. 

Lauren: Alright. Thanks for that. 

Matt: Yep. Okay. 

Lauren: Anyway, we've seen some authors do some really successful Kickstarter campaigns that are not just ahead of the book production, but just using it as a preorder campaign tool. I'm linking in the show notes a blog post from Kris Waldherr about using Kickstarter as a preorder tool. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: So definitely check that out for sure. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You can also use Kickstarter preorder campaigns as a way to sell different tiers of your book types. So if you want to gauge… let's say for example, you really want to do a special edition, you really want to do the gold foil or the sprayed edges or something like that. And as of right now, there is no like, super, super viable solution for one off printing like that, but you're going to say, okay. The minimum order that I can get for one of these really cool book designs is a hundred copies of this book. So I'm going to set up a Kickstarter campaign that I'm going to try to sell a hundred copies of this book, and then regular editions as a separate tier -

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - on that campaign. So you can do that. And you can also, like we were saying earlier, use it as a way to do the preorders way in advance when you're still in the production process of your book and get started with the general style of Kickstarter campaign that we've talked about doing in the past. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. Again, did a whole episode on it So if you really want to dive into that, there is… 

Matt: Yeah I think that's why I don't really have a lot to add here. 

Lauren: That’s fine. 

Matt: Because I think we did do a pretty good episode on that - 

Lauren: We did. 

Matt: And I think there's a lot more detail in that episode as well as actual steps and tips. So I would definitely check that out if you're interested in doing a Kickstarter. 

Lauren: Yeah for sure. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Probably the way better option - not better option, but more popular option - I think, that would be beneficial to all kinds of authors would be a direct sales preorder campaign. 

Matt: So as much as I agree with you in terms of the descriptor way better, I think for everybody's benefit and to be a little more objective - 

Lauren: Oh, I guess. 

Matt: I would say the more flexible option - 

Lauren: Ooh, okay. 

Matt: - is to do it via direct sales on your own store and your own platform. And we're going to get into all those reasons. But I agree. I think it's the way better, as you would say, way better, dude. But it's definitely the more flexible. With Kickstarter you have a decent amount of flexibility, but there's still criteria you have to stick within and they have their rules. And that's great because that's the reason why that platform works so well for people. 

On the other end of that spectrum, you have third-party retail sites. Well, there's only one or two where you can actually do preorders, but again, there's some very stringent sort of guidelines you have to stick within. Again you're sharing your money. Again you're not really getting much customer data, all those things. So I agree, this is the way better version, but it's definitely the most flexible version if you need that flexibility. Which I think to have a successful preorder campaign and to make that preorder a central part of your prelaunch marketing, you need that flexibility and you need that customer data. Go. 

Lauren: Wow. Okay. 

Matt: I gave you the perfect jump off point. 

Lauren: You did give me the perfect jump off point, but just so aggressively. Once again, we need a little frog.

Matt: I do need to get that frog don't I? 

Lauren: I did cut that out of the episode so no one knows that I'm talking about here. 

Matt: Oh, okay. 

Lauren: Only you and me. 

Matt: Lauren doesn't like frogs so everybody should send pictures of frogs to podcast@lulu.com and address it to Lauren. 

Lauren: Matt doesn't like them either, so. 

Matt: But I don't have an aversion to them like you do. They're just not my favorite. 

Lauren: Okay. 

Matt: I could care less.

Lauren: Couldn’t. 

Matt: I grew up in Florida, there's frogs everywhere. 

Lauren: Oh, that's true. You're used to monsters. 

Matt: They usually get eaten by the iguanas or the alligators. So. 

Lauren: Miss me with the iguanas for sure. 

Matt: They're gross. 

Lauren: Yep, okay. 

[32:00]

Lauren: Anyway, if you are going with a direct sales preorder campaign, there's a couple of different ways that you can do that, but it is absolutely, I completely agree with Matt that it is a great way for you to get that customer data.

Matt: Yeah, it's a great way to collect the customer data around those preorders and you won't get that customer data really in any other way. Kickstarter will give you some of that to a degree for sure, but again, outside of that, doing it directly is the only way you're going to get access to all of that customer data. 

And the reason why that's important is because you can use that for remarketing efforts later on. Every time you do a preorder or a sales campaign or anything else where you're selling these things directly, that is an opportunity to gain more email addresses and customer contacts and build your own database. The goal, I think, for everybody is to get to a point where you are your own little retail entity. You have all your own customer data and every time you have something new come out, you can start there first with people who have already purchased something from you in the past and so they've shown intent and you have those metrics to work off of, and then go out to the general public again. 

Versus right now, or maybe you don't have that data. So everything you do, you're starting from scratch audience-wise and going to the general public and saying, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. If you could start with a segmented audience that has already purchased things from you, some of which will be super fans, you're already ahead of the curve. So why wouldn't you want to do that? 

So selling direct and doing your preorders through a direct method, it's the same thing. You're getting that customer data. You're keeping all the profits. It's all those same selling points and reasons why selling direct is the most valuable option. And it's really just about getting ahead of the game with data. 

Lauren: Yeah. And it is also, so when I said that there are a couple of different ways that you can do this, the, the difference here and kind of the benefit of a preorder campaign here is that if you are interested in selling direct, you're, you're sold on this concept that it is a good idea, but you're not quite yet at the point where you have it set up, you're still working out the details of -

Matt: Boo! 

Lauren: All right. I'm trying to be nice to people. You know, you're still, you're still fine tuning the details and getting it all set up like that. You can manually do a preorder campaign. 

Matt: Yes. 

Lauren: Without having it fully set up on your store on your website, selling it direct with an ecommerce plugin tool. You can manually take preorders from people by just taking their address, their email, their credit card information, stuff like that, having them fill out very simple ecommerce like checkouts or something like that, even just through your newsletter. 

And then you can just put all that in a spreadsheet, use Lulu's order import tool to upload that spreadsheet and drop ship all your orders to those people once the book has come out. You've still fulfilled the preorder that you promised, you got everybody the books, you did all the benefits of the preorder campaign. Now you have that customer data because you have the data that they gave you in order to fulfill that preorder campaign. And once you get your store set up, you've got all that ready to go. 

Matt: Yes. And the one caveat here, if you're going to do it in a more manual fashion and not through your actual website or something like that is you just want to make sure that you're being very open and transparent with people around what's going to happen with their information and their data. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Because you are in fact the one collecting it. You know, we say that events, for example, is a great way to collect email addresses and add people to your email list. That is fine. And typically you can argue that once you load them into your contact database and they get that first email, they do consent to privacy and all those other things that you should be making them aware of. But when you're doing an actual transaction or a sale in person, sometimes you don't have that layer there with you. And so people need to understand, and you need to understand, just exactly what are you doing with that data? 

Lauren: Right. 

Matt: They need to know that it is going into your database. It is protected. You know, when you use something like Shopify, you know, or another type of ecommerce platform or app, or, you know, your email marketing list, if you're doing your ecommerce through your email platform, they have those protections in place, that stuff is there. At least I hope you're using one where it's there. Because these days there's a lot of trouble you could get in with GDPR, or not being compliant with PII, so personally identifiable information, credit card numbers, all those things. People are generally a little more inclined to buy or preorder from you when it's on your website versus you just being like, hey, hit me in the DMS and I'll, I'll take your credit card info and we'll get it ordered up. You know what I mean? Like that’s, that’s… 

Lauren: Yeah, I'm not saying that you should ask people to DM you their credit card number on Instagram. 

Matt: I'm just saying, when we talk about a manual process, let's be clear here. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: We're talking about something outside of them going onto your website and actually paying for preorder on a channel that has data protection things in place, and people generally feel more comfortable that way. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: So I wouldn't necessarily advise a manual process unless it's absolutely necessary, but it is something you can do, it's not hard. You just kind of don't have that layer of trust built in from your buyer necessarily. That doesn't mean you won't get some people that are like, let's go, I need that book, here's my credit card, here's a picture of the front and back of the card, here's my social security number, here's my home address. Like, okay. 

Lauren: I mean, yeah, obviously I would not encourage that either. I think it's more along the lines of kind of being able to use these as combined options for you. So, you know, if you are, if you're still in the process of setting up your store - I personally would encourage you that if you are planning on selling a book direct and you are not prepared to have your store set up and ready to go before your book launch, what are you doing? Those, those should be tandem at the very least. And if not, you should have the site up - 

Matt: yeah. 

Lauren: - before the book launch. So reconsider the timing on that, perhaps. But also just more importantly, it's something that you can do kind of to support each other if in the process of you setting the book up you have a conversation with somebody at an event and you say like, oh yeah, I'm getting ready for a preorder campaign for this book. And they say, oh my God, well, I'm very interested in this. Like, can I place a preorder for it now? Technically, yes. Technically there is a way for you to have a backup opportunity here where you can just say, oh yeah, sure. I absolutely can take that preorder right now. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: You know, get them to Venmo you or use your Square reader to swipe their card or something so that you're not sitting on an Excel spreadsheet that has their credit card number or something like that. 

Matt: There you go. Yep. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: As long as you're using something in that transaction, that process whereby you're still capturing payment and customer data, that's the key, right? So yes, if you're using Venmo or one of these other tools to do the transaction, you're still capturing the customer data. You can still put that into your, your order spreadsheet or whatever you're doing when you get back to your place and they can still feel comfortable with the way that that transaction took place. So yeah, I agree with that.

[38:55]

Matt: Now I realized that we've not really talked about any of the actual things that you would do to set up a preorder campaign. The reason for that is obviously it's going to be different depending on which route you take. If you do the Kickstarter route, there's obviously a process to how you set up a Kickstarter campaign, how you would upload particular files or things like that.

And some of those things from a direct sale standpoint, again hopefully you're using Lulu. And if so, it is a fairly straightforward process and we're happy to provide resources for that if you want to do that as well. And then manually that's going to vary too. So we're not going to give you step by step here. I just wanted to recognize that we did gloss over that. There's a reason for that, but we're more than happy to answer any of those questions if you have those, you can email us or check out our site for lots of resources around that. 

All right. So lastly, real quick, let's just tie some of this back together. Let's talk about some of the ways to maximize your audience reach when you are doing a preorder. Cause again, everybody struggles a little bit too with audience and making sure that we're getting enough sets of eyeballs and ears on what we're doing. Having a preorder campaign is a great marketing asset, right? Whenever we talk about things, we tend to put them into this box of, this is a marketing asset or a tactic or something you can do. And just like the actual concept of writing a book can be a marketing asset for growing your brand or who you are on the nonfiction side, then there's lots of benefits on the fiction side. A preorder campaign for that book is also a marketing tactic or asset that you can use again to further the reach of what you're trying to do, whether that's grow your brand or just get more of your fiction books in the hands of new readers and continue building that audience. So it's a great way to start building buzz before launch. We've talked about that. I hate the word buzz. I just saw it in the outline and I read it and now I wish I hadn't.

Lauren: I'll add it to the list of words that are out.

Matt: You won’t edit it out though.

Matt: But what it does is... 

Lauren: You're the one that said it. 

Matt: My eyes just glanced down and for some reason I just saw the word buzz and it happened to fit right with what I was saying. I wish it hadn't. But anyways... 

Lauren: I'm going to make you a bunch of bracelets that are all just the words that you don't want to hear. 

Matt: Hey, by the way, what do your bracelets say today? 

Lauren: Oh, what do my bracelets say? 

Matt: That's what I just asked. 

Lauren: They say Ghost Host. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Haunted, and Love is a Dagger. 

Matt: Huh. Like the first two. 

Lauren: I knew you would. Although - nevermind, I'm not going to tell you. 

Matt: Okay. Yeah, good. All right. 

Lauren: Sorry, I distracted you. 

Matt: That’s okay. 

Lauren: I'm going to make you a bracelet that says buzz and another one that says webinar. 

Matt: I'm just trying to bring all this back full circle and give them some pointers on building audience using a preorder campaign. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Why a preorder campaign is part of your marketing strategy, I should say, and not just a sales tactic, right? So again, we talk about the preorder campaign as it's not just a way to generate revenue. So it's therefore it's not just a sales tactic. It is an actual marketing tactic because you can use a preorder campaign for way more marketing reasons than you can sales reasons. Yes, they all tie in together at some point, but really again, leveraging this preorder campaign as a marketing opportunity is what we're talking about and how to maximize your reach there, right?

Lauren: Yes, absolutely. But I also do want to make the point that the preorder campaign should not be the first time that you're talking about your book. 

Matt: No. 

Lauren: And I know that contradicts a little bit with what I said at the beginning about how you're kind of wasting your prelaunch time if you're doing all this prelaunch advertising, but you're not driving people to actually purchase your book with that advertising. And that's not what I'm talking about either. I'm talking about the fact that you should be at the very least priming your audience for the fact that you have a new book coming out, that you have something in the works. 

You know, we've talked a lot about the idea of writing in public, talking about what you're doing, asking your audience for feedback, asking your audience for input, involving them in the conversation in some way. At the very least, like, you know, just making it known that this is something that you're working on back in the time that you're still working on it. But also in other ways, if you're already published and you have the opportunity to include some kind of teaser in the back of your most recent book or any of your other books. 

I fall for every single time when the first chapter of the next book is included at the end of the last book. I always go right, like there's no better way to guarantee that I'm gonna read the next book in the series than to include that first chapter, because I'll just dive right in and then I'll immediately go for it. But if that's not relevant for you, even just like, a single page, you know, if you ever… look at some of like, it's really popular in mass market paperbacks. This is a very popular strategy in like, specifically the mass market paperbacks that you see, like the pocket size ones that you see in stores, where the last couple of pages of those books will be one page advertisements for either other books by that author or other like, books in that genre from the same publisher.

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And even that is just a very simple, you don't have to do it in your print books. But if you have an ebook, where you have the opportunity to just really quickly add one extra page to the back of the ebook that is like a, hey, if you liked this, there's another one coming out soon. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Or, hey, you want to learn more about this particular strategy that I talked about in this book, like read this other one. 

Matt: Those require a bit of pre-planning. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: So I think what I really want to leave them with before we sign off here is ways to, to immediately expand your audience using a preorder campaign. And the way that you do this, and this ties back to a fundamental marketing concept, and this can apply to anything, not just books or preorders, but: word of mouth is the absolute best marketing you could ever hope to get for your brand, your business, your product, your service, it doesn't matter. 

And so up until the point where you've enacted a preorder campaign, yes, all these things that you just talked about are great, and the things we talk about all the time are great, sure. But until you have a preorder in place, the only thing that you can go and tell your friends about from your favorite author is not how, oh, go watch them write this book in public. I mean, you can say that, but they're going to be like, okay, whatever. 

There's two things you can go to your friend and say about an author that you just found that you love. Either A, go check out these two books I just read that are already published, right? Or B, they've got a book up right now for preorder. You should get your hands on this. It gives people a reason to now go out and talk about you to their friends and family and colleagues and other people, because there’s something tangible now. Whereas prior to that preorder, you're in that pre-marketing phase like you were just talking about. 

So this is stuff that's - you know, again, hopefully you've started this months and months in advance of your launch. And so you can be thinking about those things. Every time you launch a book, there's a page in the back, a sales page, right? For your next books or your previous books and some of those other things that require a lot more pre-planning and long-term effects. But using a preorder campaign to gain new audience, A, the preorder has to be up and live. And B, the way that it does that is through word of mouth, period. 

Like that's the best way to build new audience because I'm going to take a suggestion from you. Well, from somebody much more seriously than I might some ad I got on Instagram or some fake AI generated review on a third party platform. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: You all know what I'm talking about. And yes, I do take Lauren's book recommendations, when they aren't romance, a little more seriously than I might somebody else. So having that preorder is a gateway to a new audience, particularly through word of mouth. 

Lauren: Absolutely it is. And I don't disagree with any of that. 

Matt: You have to ask for it though, right? 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Hey, go tell your friends about my book that's, my preorder. 

Lauren: You do have to ask for it. It's also - preorder campaigns, like many other prelaunch efforts, are a great opportunity for you to partner with other authors or creators. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: For that word of mouth recommendation. 

Matt: Yep. 

Lauren: Whether it's asking them to promote your book or asking them to share the opportunity with you for both of you to promote your books together or other, you know, get creative with different ways that you can collaborate on promoting your new books together

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Or promoting each other. Maybe they're not writing a book or they don't have a new book coming out, but they're willing to have you on your podcast. And in exchange for you getting to promote your book on their podcast, you're going to promote their podcast to your audience. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: There are great opportunities here for this to work out with working with other people. For sure. 

Matt: Or other platforms, by the way. 

Lauren: Or other platforms, yes. 

Matt: Like BookFunnel’s a good one for, for doing preorder stuff and really getting the word out. There are other ways to amplify your reach. And yes, that's a great one, too, is collaborating with other authors that you've hopefully already networked with at events and built relationships with, right? Another episode you can check out if you want to. 

Lauren: Yup. 

Matt: You can create some urgency around your preorder by offering, like you talked about earlier, some extras that go on. Everybody loves some extras, right? We've seen some amazing nonfiction preorder campaigns hit the market over the last couple of months. Well, we're in January 2025 right now, if you're listening to this in the future, but. With some nonfiction authors through Tilt Publishing where they're offering extra things when you do the preorder and you know, we're seeing preorders now hitting a thousand units, 1500 units, some self-published and any authors won't sell that many units in a year - 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Let alone in a preorder. But if you do this preorder properly if you get ahead of the game you offer a couple of extras in there. And I'm not talking about a free car wash and two free beach towels, right? Like, we're talking about cool little things that sometimes barely costs you anything to throw in there with the preorder. Or on the nonfiction side, sometimes it's the chance to win, you know, one hour consulting period session with this particular person or things like that. 

Lauren: Which is a great - I don't want, I don't want to let that get buried in there - just the idea of anybody who preorders this book will be entered into a raffle for the possibility - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: - of winning a one hour consultation with me, or something like that. You don't have to give out $5,000 worth of online courses for free as an incentive for people to buy this book from you. 

Matt: Or go buy 6,000 bookmarks that have your new book cover on them and slide them into each. I mean, you can do those things. 

Lauren: You can. 

Matt: But the point is you can go outside of the box and get more creative and drive more value and more urgency and incentive for people to want to be part of this preorder, versus just picking up a copy afterwards. 

Lauren: You can do… You can technically this doesn't cost you anything If you want to do just bonus content or something like that. Preorder my book and I'll send you a PDF with a worksheet that goes along with it. 

Matt: Apparently this camera we're using was like a free bonus thing - 

Lauren: It must have been. 

Matt: - from some book we bought because this is ridiculous. 

Lauren: No, I'm so over this. 

Matt: At some point I believe Haunted Mansion will come after us for these interstitials. 

Lauren: I'm gonna have to make new ones because I'm getting bored of the same two over and over again. 

Matt: Oh my god, if anybody knows of a great podcasting camera to use, please email us at podcast@lulu.com. 

Lauren: Yeah, cause this one's about to go out the window. 

Matt: Oh wow. 

Lauren: Yeah. 

Matt: Okay. 

Lauren: Yeah, I mean you can get really creative with preorder incentives. You can have a lot of fun with that. I actually just had a couple weeks ago, an author that I really loved did, it wasn't even a preorder, it was a fundraiser incentive. She was asking people to donate to the LA Fire Relief Funds. 

Matt: Oh that’s great, yeah. 

Lauren: And she said, anybody who donates any amount of money to any of these organizations and submits a Google form with receipt of donation, I will email you a chapter that I cut from this book. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: Absolutely. She, she raised like a thousand dollars overnight, which is - she's an indie author. Like that's - 

Matt: That’s great. 

Lauren: That's a pretty great. 

Matt: Yeah.

Lauren: And literally in like 24 hours raised a thousand dollars for offering people a five page cut scene that hadn't been edited. Like it just - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: And like, you know, I mean, obviously I think a lot of the people, including myself, would have donated for no exchange. But that little extra incentive was enough for me to be like, oh yeah, I'm gonna do this right now instead of like thinking about, like I'm gonna stop what I'm doing right now and do this right now and think about this. 

So there are ways to get, I've done plenty of preorders where I've purchased a book as a preorder because the only thing the author promised was I will send you a signed book plate.

Like that sometimes that's all you need. Sometimes it's like, okay. Like - 

Matt: Hey that’s fair, yeah.. 

Lauren: I was - 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: I was thinking about buying this book already. And now I get to add an exclusive special signed book plate to it. Some of the authors have said, I'll personalize it and sign it. So 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Or they had a cool design. The sticker was like, is a cool design. It's not just a plain sticker with their signature on it. Like, okay. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: That’s low lift. 

Matt: I think the point here, as we get at the 60 minute mark, is is get creative. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Go outside of the box. But really, the - I think the bulk of this episode is really to help you understand not only how beneficial preorder campaigns can be for multiple reasons, but at the end of the day, it truly is a really good marketing tactic and marketing asset for prelaunch marketing activity that can really make sure you launch successfully. 

Lauren: Yes. 

Matt: Right? 

Lauren: Absolutely. 

Matt: So treating this thing as a marketing activity and not just a sales activity, not just something you're going to do to make a little extra money or to try and game the bestseller algorithm on that one platform where it's super easy and nobody cares anymore if you're bestseller on that platform. Treat it as a marketing asset to gain yourself more earned media opportunities, to do it in a direct fashion where you're going to gain customer data for remarketing purposes later on, and to open up the other doors and possibilities to expanding your audience to new readers through using some of these tactics. Right? 

Lauren: Yep. 

Matt: Awesome. 

Lauren: I think maybe the closing point is putting it this way. Out of all of the things that we have talked about in the year and change that we've been doing this podcast, if it was me right now planning my book launch strategy, probably the number one, maybe number two thing that I would plan on doing would be a prelaunch campaign, or like, a preorder campaign. There is no way that I would ever put out a book that did not include in the marketing strategy a preorder campaign.

Matt: You could have full stopped right after there's no way you're putting out a book. 

Lauren: Damn.

Matt: As my kids would say, do you want some aloe for that burn? 

Lauren: Yeah, honestly. Yeah. I think I need it. 

Matt: My daughter absolutely cooks me every time we play certain like word, word games and things. And she loves that because if she beats her dad at a word game, I think it feels even more - 

Lauren: Oh, I’m sure. 

Matt: - impressive to her because I am a word nerd, but she always asks me that, like, oh, dad, do you want some aloe for that? And I'll just be like, whatever. All right, fine. I just got cooked by my 14 year old, 15 year old daughter. 

Lauren: Good for her. 

Matt: Yep. All right. Let's wrap this thing up. 

Lauren: Yeah. I mean, I think we - I think we did it right. 

Matt: Yeah. 

Lauren: Yeah. I don't have anything to add, do you?

Matt: No, I want to go get a snack. 

Lauren: All right. Great. I want to eat lunch. Some of us didn't have a bagel twenty minutes ago, or before we started recording. 

Matt: It was an hour ago. I need a snack. 

Lauren: Alright alright alright alright. Well, thanks for listening. Thanks for watching, if you were able to watch it. I swear we're going to figure out this camera issue. 

Matt: By we you mean you as it dies again. 

Lauren: And it died again. 

Matt: Alright, thanks everybody. 

Lauren: So we're just going to end it. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week. 

Matt: Later.