Quote:
Originally Posted by Canuck_in_Japan
Why exactly does one need to pre-order an ebook? There are no physical property limitations-they can make as many as they want.
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It's simply a marketing gimmick that can be win-win for consumer and retailer alike, as pdurrant's example above showed. The consumer gets some psychological satisfaction out of having taken steps to get a much-anticipated item early (not really early but it feels like it
). More importantly for ebooks, you get the ebook auto-delivered to your Kindle on the release date (so you don't have to painfully keep track of release dates - it's sort of like DVR scheduling for ebooks
). I like this since I tend to do my shopping at specific times during the month and dislike having to keep looking up release dates, etc. and planning for them. There are times I have completely forgotten about great new books that I'd been anticipating (and that have already been released but missed the release) and wasted my time reading other not-so-good stuff.
Sometimes, ebook sellers have discounts for pre-ordering (perhaps pre-orders can help with making predictions of print runs leading to less numbers of unsold copies).
From the consumer's pov, it's more of a "why not pre-order an ebook"?