Why do you do preorders?
Printing books is startlingly expensive! So, as a small press it’s really important for us to appropriately estimate the initial print run size.
One way we do that is with our Patreon, where members at certain tiers get every book included. Another is by taking preorders.
When will I get my book(s)?
Typically we open our preorders for 2 weeks prior to the printrun, if we’re doing something different it’ll be clearly stated on the order page.
The US printer we work with typically takes 5-7 days to turn around the order.
If we need to use a printer outside the US (typically for art/photography books) the printing and transit time is longer (much longer for transit). If it’s going to be printed outside the US that information will also be on the product page.
When the books are ready we’ll begin mailing them out in order. We’re a small team, so sometimes it’ll take a while.
Why do you take a full payment?
We used to use a preorder plugin, but it caused us so many issues (with multiple hours spent trying to debug partial transactions that had disappeared into a void).
If it weren’t for the enormous cost of credit card fees, we’d like to just take a small percentage up front and then complete the transaction when we shipped the books. Unfortunately, transaction fees are significant and have a huge impact on a book’s profitability (or indeed, just our ability to make back costs).
What if I’d rather order from my local store?
We also distribute most of our books through Ingram’s print-on-demand service to make them accessible through local stores and big chains.
However, at the moment we’re too small to have a dedicated distributor so some books are only available directly from us.