Best Thing You Can Do to Support the New Book
If your favorite author has a new book coming out, you can support it in two simple ways:
- Buy it before it comes out.
- Buy it from an independent bookstore.
If you pre-order a book and order it outside of Amazon and Barnes & Noble , you’re doing the author a huge favor.
This is not about those evil at Amazon . This is how the book industry works. Andrea Bartz, author of The Lost Night murder mystery and the upcoming Herd , recently explained on Twitter why she hopes people will pre-order her book from an indie store.
The bookseller will notice
When you pre-order a book from an independent store, it will be noticed by a real person selling books for a living. And this is very important.
Many books are published every year. More than 300,000 , not counting self-published ones. Booksellers must decide which of these books someone wants to buy and stock up on them. They can’t just store everything in a warehouse like Amazon does.
So if your favorite author isn’t that important anymore – we’re talking about the Daniel Steele level – chances are your local store won’t have their new book, or just one or two copies on the back shelves instead of in a better place on the front desk.
But if you – and your fellow fans – pre-order the book, the seller will have strong evidence that there are followers, and that they should be available and contribute to the promotion of the book. They may even read the book to personally recommend it, or organize an event for the author.
After the book is out, it helps a little more to buy it yourself. But by that time, the seller has fewer options for an answer, and new books are already taking up his time. The further you order, the more you help promote the book.
“We definitely pay more attention to authors who pre-order with us,” says Emma Straub, co-owner of Books Are Magic , Brooklyn, via email. She says booksellers “notice and appreciate” when many pre-orders are placed on a particular author. They not only pay attention to the book, but also want to support the author.
Pre-ordering from Amazon still helps, Bartz said. A publisher notices how many pre-orders for his books are coming in at each store and on each platform, and the more interest they see, the more they invest in marketing the book. (Again, this is about telling the book industry where to direct its limited resources.) But Amazon can store almost anything, and it’s more likely to charge publishers additional promotion fees than a local store. Thus, it is unlikely that the book will be sold for free based on pre-orders.
The New York Times will notice
The New York Times bestseller lists are some of the best promotional material a book can get. Avid readers, critics, and booksellers will take notice of these listings. They always feature biographies of several celebrities and the latest airport books by James Patterson or John Grisham. But depending on the competition, there could be a good debut novel, memoir, or other non-celebrity book this week. And there is a trick to get on this list.
The Times List is not just a list of the books that sold the most copies. The Times interrogates a classified list of bookstores and wholesalers and adjusts it according to a known secret algorithm . One of the amendments is to increase the weight of independent bookstores. (The stated goal is to keep authors and publishers from playing the system through bulk ordering and other gimmicks. Some writers have accused the Times of political bias .)
Therefore, if you order from an independent store, you are more likely to help it get on the bestseller list.
Of course, if you buy a book on Amazon, you can help it get listed on Amazon. But it is considered a less dramatic way to increase sales. Plus the list goes a long way down, so there is no dramatic cut-off point for the book to cross. In 2016, a book marketing consultant detailed how to get listed in the Times and Wall Street Journal , but did not mention Amazon’s listing. (To support Amazon sales of the book, please provide feedback on the site.)
It’s super easy
If you know and love a particular bookstore in your area, you can pre-order at the checkout. When the book arrives, they will call or email you. This means that you are guaranteed to receive a copy on the first day.
“All bookstores are pre-ordering!” – says Straub. “We have a lot of clients who order books from us because they know they will be signed and personalized for them at an event and then we will ship them the next day.”
If you’re too busy to order in person, you can often make a purchase on the store’s website and even ask them to send the book to your home. It’s like ordering something online.
If your local store doesn’t have online orders or don’t have a specific store in mind, you can also order from IndieBound , an independent store site that can distribute a portion of your payments to its members. This helps support the book market in more than one big supermarket, which helps authors and publishers in the long run and helps people who like to buy their books in person.
You can even place an order at a store far away, Straub notes, for example at a store you visited during your trip. “Love story? Make The Ripped Bodice your local, even if you live in Des Moines! If you like the idea of a bookstore tree, order from Skylight! If you like pink and neon, order from us! “
Finally, you can order e-books and audiobooks through independent stores. Visit the local store or make an order through Kobo or Libro.fm . Once registered, the process isn’t too different from Amazon.
Bartz tweeted her, she emailed me because friends and family kept asking what was the most helpful way to buy her book and asking things like “Is Amazon an indie?” She realized that things that seemed obvious to her were not obvious to all book buyers. And she says she’s also grateful to everyone who buys her books from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or borrows them from the library.
Of course, Bartz’s viral thread has also drawn more attention to her own upcoming book, The Herd , which is set in the “exclusive New York women’s workspace.” (So Wing .) This is exactly the kind of interesting book that benefits from the early buzz.
Sometimes buying from indie will cost you more than buying from Amazon. It’s okay if you have to buy on Amazon to save money. But many indies have membership programs and discounts. And the support of these stores contributes to a healthier book industry. Indies are big believers in small books, new voices, and local talent that can’t compete with the Grishams and Pattersons. India hosts all kinds of social events, the value of which far exceeds what the Amazon warehouse has to offer. By buying through indie, you are making better books.