Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has announced a new feature: Pre-ordering.

From their press release:

We’re excited to announce that you can now make your new books available for pre-order in Kindle Stores worldwide. With a few quick and easy steps you can create a pre-order page up to 90 days in advance of your book’s release date – your pre-order product page will be created within 24 hours. When you make your book available for pre-order, customers can order the book anytime leading up to the release date you set. We will deliver it to them on that date.

One advantage of using pre-order is that you can start promoting your Kindle book pre-order page on Author Central, Goodreads, your personal website, and other places ahead of its release to help build excitement for your book. Also, pre-orders will contribute toward sales rank and other Kindle Store merchandising ahead of release, which can help more readers discover your book.

Visit your KDP Bookshelf to set up your new book for pre-order.

Here are a few details:

Setting it up

Go through the process of uploading your book to KDP as you normally would. When you get to Step 4, you’ll see an option to set up a pre-release date.

Your ebook will appear in the Kindle Store in about 24 hours, as usual, but it will be identified as a pre-order. Customers can pre-oder the book up until the release date — and they may cancel at any time before the book is released.

Once the book is released, the customer will be able to download their book.

Upfront upload

You need to upload a final version of the ebook at least 10 days before the book goes live.

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For more information on Kindle Direct Publishing, please check out these archive posts.