If you’ve ever been involved in publishing to Amazon KDP and known the sour taste of fear engendered by those emails with the nasty subject lines: “your book was not published…”

If you’ve ever thrown up your hands in despair at resolving all the obscure errors they’ve listed with which the publishing of your book cannot go forward…

If you’ve ever had a hundred people RSVP to a launch party and with 24 hours to go the question still lingers as to whether you’re going to even have a book to launch…

This blog’s for you!

Amazon has heard the pleas of the masses and made a massive change for the better—you can now schedule your book’s release from 5 to 90 days in advance!

For those of you who have experienced the third if-clause listed above, I’ll just go ahead and give you a moment to perform whatever version of happy dance best suits you. I know I did a few pirouettes when I heard.

There are three key points that come along with this change that I’d like to highlight:

  1. This only applies to print books. Ebooks already have a pre-order option.
  2. Your detail page will not be available until the book release date.
  3. You will not be able to update anything related to your book FIVE DAYS before release.

And one final bonus before you click onward—once you’ve scheduled your release date, you will be able to order author copies. Even before the book goes live! You can choose to have actual, physical copies at that launch party instead of QR codes on posters. Amazing!

If you’re the type that likes to get it from the horse’s mouth, here’s a link to the Amazon page describing the change in greater detail.