"Pre-ordering Books" Topic

Last April, I pre-ordered a copy of The Viking Longships by Jorn OlavLoset. It was supposed to be available in June. As the months passed, the delivery date slipped, until November, when it stabilized on February 2016. Midway through this month, I checked to see what the actual day was and when I could expect it. Somebody in publisher-land seems to have just thrown his hands up in the air, said "I give up!" and now the anticipated date is February 9, 2017.

This being the first book I've ever preordered, I'm wondering if this is the sort of thing I can expect or is this just a one time, horrible example?

Grelber

I don't know how prevalent it is in the publishing world but I had a similar experience with a book from Casemate. Delay, delay, delay. And when it was finally released it was truly awful. The editing was terrible and the "facts" presented in the book itself should have been more carefully checked by the publishers before being released. Based on this experience I've never purchased another book by Casemate. I'm not saying all their titles are bad but I'd never buy from them unless I knew the author and trusted his expertise in the subject. Caveat emptor. Another lesson I learned was simply not to pre-order. Usually, however, you're not actually charged for the book until it's shipped.

I'm wondering if this is the sort of thing I can expect or is this just a one time, horrible example?

I have to say that it is not unusual. Some publishers are better than others.

Pre-ordering is silly.
If you pay by credit card, they cant bill you till the item ships so what's the point?

Not done too many pre-orders. Had a good experience with the last Battlegrouo book through Plastic Soldier Company, so just pre-ordered Wacht am Rhein from them. Never had the sort of issue OP reports, who is the publisher? I think in the military history area there are a few "one man band" publishers out there, who might get themselves in a bit of a mess.

If you preordered through Amazon this is quite normal. They list books automatically the moment an ISBN is assigned so things appear months before the pubkisher sets a date or the book is even written!

Westholme Publishing

link

looks to have quite an extensive catalogue …
The publisher site shows publication date as 02/09/2017.

I stopped doing that when I had to wait almost a year after paying for a book.
Now I just keep watching it until it is actually published, and then place an order.

I pre-ordered several books from a publisher in a single transaction. Included in the transaction was a postage charge (at a reduced rate per book because I was ordering several books). When the first book was released, they charged me the full single book postage on that book and intended to do so for each of the remaining books as the were released. I think that it was going to triple the total postage cost by the time that I got all of the books, so I cancelled the order and bought elsewhere. I can understand that the publisher didn't want to lose money on the postage, but they should have made it clear in the first place how they were going to deal with the postage issue. I didn't authorise them to do what they did on my credit card and I thought that behaviour was borderline dishonest. Watch out for this sort of conduct.

I've preordered a bunch of books, mostly via Amazon, over the years and probably most have been substantially delayed (weeks, months, even years in one case). One or two have been delivered before the originally announced date. So your experience is fairly normal I'd say.

(So why do I preorder books when long delays are to be expected? Precisely not to have to keep watching. I don't recall ever having had to pay before they shipped the thing, however – I'd be more than a bit wary of that.)