on obsessive preordering

My Unhinged Strategy

Barnes and Noble preorder sale! Amazon preorder sale! Order this limited edition now! Special bonus content! Curated Afterlight box set! Limited art prints! The preorder space, specifically for romance and ROMANTASY, is daunting. What the actual fuck!? Why are there so many options? Why do so many big box stores and websites have different special editions of the same book? Are just the sprayed edges different or does it also include bonus content? As an old favorite podcast of mine always used to say IT IS CAPITALISM! All the way down. I would also argue that this has something to do with the Taylor Swift record release strategy and Target specifically…but I am not ready to fight that battle with some of you. 

How do I make decisions about what to preorder? I don’t really give a shit about sprayed edges or hardcovers or special art prints or stickers or bonus content. Bonus content is always going to be available eventually somewhere. Are you honestly going to frame the art print? Use the stickers? I know I won’t. I have done a few special preorders (through INDIE BOOKSTORES!) for authors I am ride or die for. I still have the art prints and stickers stored away somewhere? I want to be upfront that while I do preorder books and I think preorders are really important for authors, I am not precious about my physical books and their condition. I want them all to be paperback. Honestly, I would love more of them to be mass market. When making a preorder decision, I think a lot about “can I access this book on KU? Will I want to read it immediately? Will it be something I can easily get from my local library? Do I think I am going to want a physical copy?” Usually, the answer is yes because I know I will be able to resell it or give it to a friend/the library. More on the why’s of my choices later when we do the numbers! 

How do I find out about books? Mostly from social media. I follow a small amount of social media romance instagrams that post new releases when they hear about them. I say a small amount because I am easily overwhelmed by following too many people and most of these accounts have the exact same taste as me! DifficultWomanReads, b.andherbooks, ali_learns_to_read, baskinsuns, breesbookmark, plottrysts, ToriLovesHeas, guiltless.pleasures.romance, unsuccessfulbookclub, eawilcox, and talk_about_swoon. I also follow all of my favorite authors who post both their own personal news and each other’s. Ali Hazelwood for instance is great at posting about other book releases. I do google “new romance book releases april 2025” etc. The NYT romance coverage, Publisher’s Weekly (I am not a paid subscriber but if an author says they got a rave review there or from a librarian’s group, I usually know it is going to be good), and the long long standing Hot Stuff column in Entertainment Weekly by Maureen Lee Lenker remain good places to check in and see what new releases are getting rave reviews.

How do you track it all? This year in order to get off the ease of tracking via an Amazon wishlist (I do this even when I don’t preorder on Amazon because it is easy to use and I want to see covers), I made an excel spreadsheet. Bookshop and Tropes & Trifles also have wishlist options on their website. The excel allows me to group every preorder by the month it comes out in. So what I do now is basically order 3-8 (haha!) books in one order from Tropes & Trifles, understanding that they will ship to me after they have all been released. I don’t preorder lots of popular books because I know I will be able to find a copy at the used book store soon or a random day at Barnes & Noble with my son. These are the Hazelwoods (with the exception of her paranormal work), the Baileys, the Henrys. I want these books to have a little time to marinate in the public sphere before I get around to reading them. I want the discourse to die a little so I can read them as a clean slate. A hipster impulse, I am sure. 

How do you decide what to spend on? I make it a point to preorder books written by queer authors, by non-white authors, by indie authors, or historical romances in mass market as they are out of vogue for many. I want to make sure that the authors that do not get the lion’s share of press are rewarded by knowing people are preordering their work. Some of these books I anticipate reading as soon as they come out. Funds are limited for us all. If you read as much as me, it is important to make decisions within your financial means. Libraries, as always, remain a great resource to access books in your area. For many books, I look for them at the library first. If I read a library copy and become obsessed, I buy it. I monitor sales with a retailer like Barnes & Noble, my locals, and Bookshop. Used bookstores that buy and sell from customers are one way I attempt to maintain a book buying budget. 

So here is a view of my excel. Please know I am always adding to it and I know it leans heavily into traditional publishing rather than indie. It is not nearly diverse enough for my tastes. 

Think about preorders as encouragement. What books do you want to see more of? What authors do you want to keep making publishing deals? What indie authors do you want to see moving to trad or getting more funds to move to paperback publishing instead of solely digital? What bookstore do you want to see stay in business? 

Data corner featuring Lauren (of Tropes & Trifles):

My bookseller friend Lauren, as you know!, provided me with some data about more recent queer romance releases. This data includes new books releasing May to August 2025. Nothing previously indie published or making the move from hardcover to paperback. Only adult! YA has better margins than this. 

• Harper Collins (Harlequin, Avon, Carina Adores, Afterglow) 6 out of 42 new releases are queer (12.8%)

• Hachette (Orbit and Forever) 7 out of 42 new releases are queer (16.7%)

• PRH (Berkley) 9 out of 67 new releases are queer (13.4%)

• Macmillan (St. Martin’s, Entangled, Bramble, Red Tower) 8 out of 56 new releases are queer (14.3%)

• Sourcebooks (Bloom) 2 out of 36 new releases are queer (5.6%)

• Simon & Schuster (Atria, Gallery) 2 out of 21 new releases are queer (9.5%)

• IN TOTAL: 34 out of 269 new releases (12.6%)

ABYSMAL stuff here. Take for example the fact that Afterglow books is an imprint with the sole purpose of publishing trade paperbacks for lower prices ($12-$14) so that readers are more likely to take a risk on a new author. Their BIPOC margins are slightly better than most but…42 new releases in 4 months and only 2 are queer at all. My guess would be that their release dates are in June. Pride month, anyone? But even that cannot be true as Lauren notes that Afterglow’s only queer release (and one of the only BIPOC queer books of all the stats mentioned) comes out in August. To be clear, when I say “queer release” I mean that the characters, at least one, is queer. My other bet would be that a majority of the queer books referenced above are either bisexual MF pairings or white MM romances. I have and continue to love many of those books. But the absolute dearth of sapphic romances is a topic of conversation I have with almost all romance readers I encounter. Beyond that, the lack of a butch representation in that grouping is even more dire. Perhaps even nonexistent. And to be very clear, I am talking about trad publishing. I know there is a wealth of indie books that go above and beyond to cover a diverse array of characters. More and more indie bookstores are providing that content, libraries too, and for many of us, this is why we can’t break up with our Kindle ereaders. What is even the point of so many different romance imprints if you cannot commit to diversifying your reader space? Are these publishers even having conversations with book sellers about how well queer romances sell in those spaces?

People with more knowledge and eloquence than me have written about the importance of representation and the importance of being seen both in general and as a queer person. All I can say is that as a dedicated romance reader, I can see the lack of options with many publishers stuck hyping the same authors or the same formulas over and over again. What I wouldn’t give for someone like TJ Alexander to experience their version of hardcover releases and several different sprayed edges options with bonus material till everyone (me) thinks they’ve reached over exposure. 

talk soon,

Britt