Why Pre-Order?
This is a great question, and one a lot of people have probably wondered (especially as we’ve been posting our forthcoming publications). Why pre-order a book rather than wait until it’s available to ship or to grab at your local bookstore? Pre-ordering a book from a small press helps get an idea of the size of an audience for a title and figure out approximately how many copies needed to print. This is not unlike larger publishers.
But UNLIKE a larger established publisher with loads of books coming out all the time. small presses rely on pre-order sales to help cover some of the cost of printing. And because here at Toad Hall Editions we have decided to steer clear of Amazon and other mainstream distributors (who take the lion’s share of the profits from sales) as well as to share our profits with our authors, we must necessarily rely more heavily on our authors to help publicize and market their books. Pre-orders help them and they help us—a small, independent, women-owned press!
Some of our readers might say “I don’t want to pre-order a book I won’t get for a few months.” Or maybe you can’t afford to buy a book at all right now. We hear you. That is valid. But you can still support our authors by suggesting your local public library pre-order the book and then request it for checkout as soon as it becomes available. This achieves the same end—a copy of the book is still pre-ordered and purchased—and it also helps ensure that author’s presence in your library for other readers in your community. Win-Win!
A book pre-order and the impact it can have, especially for authors and a small press, is uniquely meaningful. Our readers are people like us who love stories, who engage with characters and concepts, who delight in and cherish the written word. Book pre-orders can help ensure that bookmaking continues, and it gives you, the beloved reader, a voice in the publishing process. We hope you’ll consider pre-ordering titles from us and from other small presses, and keep independent publishing alive and well! This small press, for one, is grateful for every ounce of your support.
Toad Hall Editions books and journals available for pre-order right now include kerning issue 2, Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year by Elizabeth Garber, and Consecration Pond , by Laura Bonazzoli.