How does pre-ordering through Amazon work?
I’ll begin by mentioning my own experience…. In my own experience, and this applies only to music CDs, as I can usually wait that bit longer with books (given the shelves of books that I’ve got ready to be read there’s rarely the degree of urgency that many seem to feel with Harry Potter and the like, but each to their own). With some of the lines you’d have to wait in to buy popular things at the time of release from a shop this might actually mean you get a copy quicker than you would do if you went to a shop at the time it opened (although I suppose with these midnight opening times that’s probably not the case with Harry Potter). The advantage of it being pre-ordered, combined with Amazon’s rather substantial market share, is that they really shouldn’t run out: they have a pretty good idea of the number which will be pre-ordered well in advance, and assume they’ll sell a lot of something like this. Consequently, they can order plenty to cover all of the pre-orders and then some,
