Preorders count towards first-week sales, which determine a book’s ranking on the best-seller list, which has a big effect on how many people read it. … So preorders are valuable, and they’re especially valuable before the first print (mid-June) and the second print (mid-July). We’re told that 10,000 pre-orders constitutes a good chance of being on the best-seller list (depending on the competition), and 20,000 would be a big deal. … Bulk preorders don’t count.
I thought the preorders argument was about the total of preorders, not just the preorders of Amazon. If that’s right then I don’t understand your sentence.
The best-seller list makers need to get their data from somewhere, and they can do that for Amazon pre-orders at least, but it’s not obvious they can and will do this for any old shop. In which case pre-ordering with some of the shops might fail to work for the purpose of influencing best-seller lists.
If the best-seller list makers are getting this data from the publishers, which receive all preorders from all sellers, that can take care of this problem. But a shop, as a nominal buyer from the publisher, doesn’t necessarily distinguish individual orders made within the shop from the bulk orders, the number of unique end-buyers doesn’t seem relevant to their transaction, and so it might fail to be one of the pieces of data that gets communicated to the publisher. While the best-seller list makers want that info, so they might prefer to get more data from shops directly, in which case they will fail to track some of the shops.
It’s more of a model than an assessment, the claim I’m making is that I don’t see how we can be sure that this works for too many shops (and which shops those are, other than the obvious), given how the relevant data might travel through these systems, and how the best-seller list makers have incentives to remain opaque about what specifically they are doing. (Barnes & Noble should of course be fine.)
It’s effective for making the book more popular (Amazon specifically certainly works for this purpose, unclear which other places would):
I thought the preorders argument was about the total of preorders, not just the preorders of Amazon. If that’s right then I don’t understand your sentence.
The best-seller list makers need to get their data from somewhere, and they can do that for Amazon pre-orders at least, but it’s not obvious they can and will do this for any old shop. In which case pre-ordering with some of the shops might fail to work for the purpose of influencing best-seller lists.
If the best-seller list makers are getting this data from the publishers, which receive all preorders from all sellers, that can take care of this problem. But a shop, as a nominal buyer from the publisher, doesn’t necessarily distinguish individual orders made within the shop from the bulk orders, the number of unique end-buyers doesn’t seem relevant to their transaction, and so it might fail to be one of the pieces of data that gets communicated to the publisher. While the best-seller list makers want that info, so they might prefer to get more data from shops directly, in which case they will fail to track some of the shops.
I have no deeper knowledge about how such pre-order rankings work, so it seems there are two contradictory assessments:
You seem to say that it’s only really sure for Amazon (I am not sure whether you would also dismiss shops like Barnes & Noble).
At least there is one person claiming that “a German pre-order from a local bookstore will make a difference”.
It’s more of a model than an assessment, the claim I’m making is that I don’t see how we can be sure that this works for too many shops (and which shops those are, other than the obvious), given how the relevant data might travel through these systems, and how the best-seller list makers have incentives to remain opaque about what specifically they are doing. (Barnes & Noble should of course be fine.)