What We Owe The Future, Will MacAskill's upcoming book on longtermism, is available for pre-order!
Pre-orders are especially helpful for the book's eventual reach since (a) early pre-orders cause booksellers to order more copies of the book and market it more prominently, and (b) pre-orders combine with first-week sales, making the book more likely to reach bestsellers lists upon launch. In mid-June, 8 weeks before the launch of the book on August 16, we'll begin a pre-order campaign to the general public.
I'd love to hear ideas on how to (a) encourage pre-orders within the EA community in the next couple of months, and (b) how to encourage pre-orders from the general public, especially to young people who might switch to high-impact careers.
Note that once the book is launched, we'll have more leeway to do large book giveaways, akin to current giveaways of The Precipice. Right now, “organic” sales (orders of 20 or fewer copies coming from individual accounts rather than giveaways or reimbursement schemes) are critical.
I’m interested in all takes, but here are some specific questions that might be helpful:
- How should we promote the book at upcoming EAGs? (Beyond emails to attendees, we're considering giving away free bookmarks with QR codes to pre-order, and are open to creative marketing ideas that are not overbearing to attendees!)
- Are there specific influential people that you wish EA was engaging more that we should share the book with?
- Are there specific shows or websites that you watch regularly that you think we should advertise with or pitch content to?
- Which endorsements would be most impactful for the book? (See our top endorsements so far here)
Ah, right, yes! I think there's potentially a place for both. If I think about a promotion strategy, there's something to be said for ensuring the book has a big initial print run/has a shot at the NYT bestseller list or similar.
On a parallel path, we should also aim for this to be a sustained seller, growing to sell hundreds of thousands or even millions of copies. Endorsements and podcast appearances can help, but nothing achieves that kind of momentum without also having word of mouth.
To maximize our potential surface area for those critical person-to-person referrals, you probably want to figure out how to distribute as many copies as humanly possible. If the Gates Foundation wants to buy 500 copies, we shouldn't care too much that it won't be the correct type of sale for the NYT chart - that kind of distribution pays back in other ways.
I focus on both upfront 'pop' and long-term sales because most book launch efforts are very short-lived. If they don't sell well to start, they kind of flame out. If we have a plan for both short-term hype building and long-term sustainable and growing sales, we might be able to succeed at hitting big sales milestones even without a bestseller list appearance.