Chapters:
Change Pre-Order date on KDP: 6:28
Change Pre-Order date on IngramSpark: 8:50

There is no law or rule that says your book has to have a pre-order. Managing an effective pre-order campaign takes time and patience and your book may not necessarily need one. While this is a super-effective tool to build demand and excitement and hopefully get you enough sales the moment your book releases to jump you to the top of the charts, it isn’t required.

Second, when you’re self-publishing a book, your pre-order begins when you announce that the pre-order is available. Not when you upload and click “submit.” Why? Because Amazon even says it can take up to 72 hours for your eBook to be approved for pre-order. With IngramSpark your book has to go into proofing that you have to approve and enable distribution for and then it can take up to 6 weeks for the metadata to pull through. I’ve typically seen it take a week to a week and a half for all the metadata to send to the retailers. And you certainly don’t want to send your readers to a link that only has one format or a page with information missing.

That’s why I like to have at least 6 weeks of buffer, ideally 8 so I can have at least a 6 week pre-order period for my books. I’ve worked with authors who reach out to me in a panic because their book is supposed to release on X date but the proofs aren’t right on IngramSpark or the links aren’t showing all the metadata and the book HAS to release on X date. Sometimes I find out the reason it has to be released on that date is it is the author’s birthday and the date means a lot to them to get the book out. Look, I’m all for telling a great story to help with the marketing, but stressing yourself out to reach an arbitrary date makes no sense. I want The Alpha-Nina to release on August 8th of this year. It didn’t happen, nowhere close. I wasn’t about to rush, cut corners, or make the publishing platforms mad in order to make it fit.

Changing your pre-order and release date on KDP:
You can only change it one time in KDP and it has to be more than 5 days out.
Go into your eBook details on KDP and you can change the date to your new release date.
You will get a message that asks you to confirm and reminds you that you can only do this once. If you do it again you will lose the ability to do pre-orders for a year! Effectively anyone who has already pre-ordered is now getting their book delayed. Amazon is all about making their customer happy and your hasty changes could make their customers UNHAPPY.

If you try to change the date again you will not be allowed to do a pre-order at all on the system for a year. It’s serious, don’t be hasty about it. Really think about the date and give yourself enough time to have a successful pre-order campaign.

Changing your pre-order and release date on IngramSpark:
You can change your pre-order release date on IngramSpark, I haven’t seen any negative messages as far as not being able to do a pre-order again. However, it doesn’t mean you aren’t making the system mad when you do this. First, the new date has to trickle out to retailers so don’t expect an immediate change on the retailer websites. Also, if you are making changes, make them once. Not lots of little changes all the time. Again, a reason to plan ahead before you upload anything.

Best of luck with your pre-order and book launch!

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