Book preorders for translations: what changed and how to use them

Since the end of September 2026, there are more places where you can open book preorders, and more time to do it. On September 29, Draft2Digital announced that its Smashwords store now takes preorders for ebooks, and on Amazon you can now set up a preorder up to 18 months before release. If you're waiting on a translation of your book, this is a way to give readers in the new language something to order before the final file is even ready.

What is a book preorder

A preorder is a book page that goes up in a store before the book comes out. It has a cover, a description and a date. A reader who clicks "order" gets nothing at that moment. The book lands on their device automatically on release day.

Why is that good for you? Because the orders add up. Instead of every buyer showing up in the week after launch, some of them are already waiting. Both companies say these accumulated orders help the book's sales rank, meaning its position on the store's lists.

What exactly changed this month

Smashwords. Draft2Digital is a service that distributes ebooks to several stores from one account, and Smashwords is the store it owns. According to the official announcement from September 29, you can now open a preorder there up to 12 months ahead. The reader's card is only charged on release day, and all the orders count toward the book's rank on that day.

One important detail: you can open the preorder before you have a file or a cover, and submit them at least ten business days before release. The company points out that through it, you could already open preorders at Apple Books, Barnes & Noble and Kobo. What's new is its own store. It also says that fewer than one in five of its authors use preorders at all.

Amazon. The help page of KDP (Amazon's self-publishing platform) on preorders now carries a new rule: a preorder set up on or after September 2, 2026 can be up to 18 months out. Before, it was 12. The rules for pushing back a date got looser too. You can postpone up to twice, as long as the new date is no more than six months after the original one.

Why this matters for a translated book in particular

Translating a whole book takes time, and the finish date isn't always known in advance. We wrote about that in how long it takes to translate a book. A preorder lets you open the book's page in the new language as soon as the translation starts, and let it gather readers while the work goes on.

There's another upside: you get to test the market before everything is ready. If the Spanish page is collecting orders and the French one isn't, you've learned something about the cover, the description or the language, and you still have time to fix it.

It also ties into another Amazon rule. Since the end of September, Amazon lets you open only two new books a week per format, and a preorder counts as a new book like any other. If you open your preorders early, you spread those openings across several weeks instead of hitting the quota in launch week.

Book preorders: what to check before you open one

1. The format. On Amazon, preorders are for ebooks only. For a print book you can schedule a release up to 90 days ahead, but the page stays hidden until that day, and nobody can order it before then.
2. A date with breathing room. On Amazon, the final file has to be in at least 72 hours before release. On Smashwords, at least ten business days. Give yourself a lot more than that: after the translation arrives there's still editing, layout and checking.
3. What happens if you miss it. On Amazon, a preorder that doesn't get its file in time is canceled, and the readers who ordered get a notice. The first time, you get off without a penalty. The second time, you lose the ability to open preorders for six months, on every book in your account.
4. Cover and description in the new language. The page is visible to readers from day one, so the title and description need to be written properly from the start. See the title and back-cover text get rewritten, not translated.

When it's better to skip it

If you don't have a reliable finish date for the translation, don't open a preorder just because you can. An 18-month window is tempting, but a cancellation hurts the readers who already ordered, and on Amazon it also costs you permissions.

The safer route: wait until the translation is done, then open a preorder of a few weeks, to cover editing, proofreading and promotion. It's less dramatic, but it works.

What we still don't know

Draft2Digital's announcement doesn't say anything specific about translated books, and neither do Amazon's help pages. The rules are the same for every book. Rules like these also change, as we saw this month, so before you set a date, check the help pages again that same week. More questions about publishing a translated book are collected in our frequently asked questions.