[Suggestion] Book Pre-Order Incentives

Clearly people pre-ordering books is good for FAKKU! You get money before you even have a product out. You get to use this money to pay people and invest in future work sooner. Currently there is no reason to pre-order a book from a consumer standpoint, when the first chapters come up a week or two after. I think its only fair to give people something in return. I was thinking a week of Fakku Gold while they wait for the chapters to start trickling in. More people would pre-order, and you would potentially generate interest in subbing from people who wouldnt otherwise. Seems like a win - win.

Originally the incentive was the free digital copy that came with the paperback, but that freebie never went away and we decided to make it a permanent bonus. Right now I'd say the pre-order incentive for paperbacks is higher shipping priority, since we send them out based on when the order was placed. So for instance while the people who pre-ordered Kira Kira early are now getting their copies in the mail, you'd end up at the end of the shipment queue if you bought the book now and have to wait for us to send out all the pre-orders before we can send you your book.

As for digital copies, the incentive was (and I suppose still is) that you get to read the chapters ahead of time. Take the new Key book as an example. The way it was originally planned, the pre-order would have started last week, and the book would've been released 3~4 weeks later. We experimented a bit with the first few titles, and instead we ended up with the current system where we put out the first chapter a week after the pre-order goes up, and the rest over the course of 1½-2 weeks. You still get the full book at around the same time, but pre-ordering gives you access to the chapters earlier.


I don't know if this was the answer you wanted, but basically we already have pre-order incentives. They've all just become permanent features.

The problem with the free sub is that if screws them over if they start releasing more books per month.
Why subscribe if you're getting free sub from buying books?

Maybe you could incorporate it with the loyalty system if you still plan on doing that.

That's one of the main reasons why I don't think free subs with books would be reasonable. It's very hard take back or downsize a perk once you start offering it.

Going back to the paperback+digital combo, even if some people would only buy the paperback if the digital didn't come with it, we're still selling a $30 product for $20. It would've made perfect sense to keep that a pre-order bonus and then have a $25 bundle afterwards, or simply sell them separately like most other publishers/retailers. However, since we took a different approach from the very beginning, I think it's easy to take this bonus for granted and forget that it's even a bonus in the first place. Maybe it's not much of a pre-order incentive anymore, but hopefully it's clear that we instead chose to make the book service better overall.

If anything, some form of loyalty program is probably the preferred alternative, but coming up with a decent, balanced system is no simple task.

Post cards, art cards, autographs and Jacob's beard hair.

But if there were only incentives on Pre-ordering books why would anyone want to be a loyal subscriber?(this was just a though It is not a direct question really)

My actual question is if not a free Subscription for a period of time, what would you actually like to see as an incentive that would make you say, "okay let me pre-order this book so I can get this incentive". Just me being curious.