Ask Not What Your Pre-order Can Do For Me...

Help me help you by choosing a pre-order incentive for DAD TRUTHS!

(Removed the paywall for this one, so more people can vote. But please upgrade to paid for future Friday editions!)

Earlier this week on my Instagram page (follow me!), I asked my followers if there was anything I could do to entice them to pre-order DAD TRUTHS, my first (and hopefully not last) book, which hits the shelves on April 2nd.

Polling my audience was something I’d suggested to my publisher when we were discussing marketing tactics, to see which way the wind was blowing. We’d been throwing around some ideas for pre-order incentives but I thought it would be helpful to see what my most engaged followers thought about our ideas.

The ideas I included in the poll were: donating a percentage of each pre-order to a designated non-profit, perhaps something related to multiple sclerosis, a chronic illness that Mom and Buried lives with, or an organization dedicated to protecting children, like SOSA (Safe from Online Sex Abuse); signed bookplates to be included with every pre-ordered book; some kind of tchotchke, e.g., a Dad and Buried-branded beer koozie or beer coasters (or maybe even something non-beer related for some reason!); and last but not least, “bonus digital content”.

Before I let you know the results, I want to give you a chance to weigh in and vote!

One last option that I didn’t include on Instagram was my publisher’s idea of a “parent care” prize in which people who pre-order receive a gift certificate to a babysitter service so they can go out for a date night.

Vote below!

I’ll let you know what happens. Please note that I removed the bonus content option because few people voted for it, and also because between this newsletter and my social media output and the book I wrote, I am about tapped out on new material!

Speaking of voting…

Winner Winner!

My face has been judged, and it has been found WANTING. Probably. Either way, the tribe has spoken (via these polls) and decided which image I should use for my author photo:

I appreciate that my expression is saying, “Seriously? We’re doing this? Okay, I guess.”

As for the worst picture? This one was a gimme:

I’m sorry for subjecting you to that. Blame my parents.

Thanks for weighing in, and be on the lookout for my face at a bookstore near you!

PRE-ORDER NOW

If you have any other ideas for what make you more likely to pre-order the book—again, pre-orders are ESSENTIAL to its success—let me know in the comments or on IG or in my email. Or just go buy it now!

I can track my Amazon sales rank via their author marketplace, and last week I skyrocketed up to around the 23,000th-ranked book. Which isn’t great, but it’s better than being the 600,000th-ranked book, which is where I was before I started promoting it. Hopefully some incentives will grease the wheels for anyone on the fence, but until then, please go pre-order it now. I’d love to get my rank up to four - or even three? - digits.

We can do this!!!