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If you run a label that takes pre-orders, I think there’s an extra onus on you to have your shit-together. With that in mind, I crafted some guidelines that provide a template as to how a pre-order should be run. Feel free to regard the following as “the ultimate argument settler.”

Harry’s Rules (pre-requisites, rather) for Labels Taking Pre-Orders

1. Understand the process of record production the vagarities of your artists, mastering house, printer and pressing plant well enough to schedule a release date (give or take no more than a week or two). Here are some hints:
   • The record doesn’t exist until your artist has given you music and art. Selling it before then is selling a fantasy.
   • Give yourself 2 weeks to get mastering turned around. And then a month to press records. Print turnaround depends. But remember that the record exists in a way that can be scheduled only once the master’s been cut.
2. Even if you are confident about your release date (give or take a week or two), DO NOT TAKE PEOPLE’S MONEY ANY FURTHER THAN A MONTH PRIOR TO WHEN YOU EXPECT TO SHIP. Unless, of course, you’re trying to capitalize on fleeting hype, in which case you may want to reconsider why you’re putting out the record in the first place.
3. Taking money in order to pay your pressing plant is not a “pre-order” but rather a some sort of a bummer pseudo-ponzi-type situation.
4. Tell people what the release date is when you announce the pre-order. This builds “anticipation” for the record and saddles you with enough specific responsibility to force you keep your proverbial shit together. Release dates move all the time, but people will think you’re hell of together if you can pull one off.
5. If you cannot handle the simple technology of a master list containing the names, addresses and contact information of the people who’ve given you their money in good faith, you should not be taking pre-orders. There’s a particularly popular computer product called Micro-Software Excel that may be able to help to this end. (Yes, we suspect that you do, in fact, have a computer because you posted your pre-order on the internet and take PayPal.) Barring this, a fresh pad of legal paper and a marker should do the trick.
6. (Optional) Don’t put your entire run up for pre-order. This requires a little bit of math and a touch of discipline, but can actually be handled with a few easy steps:
   • Start with the quantity of your entire run.
   • Decide where you’d like to sell the record.
   • Contact the people who may resell your record and figure out the quantities that they’ll need.
   • Set aside the sum of these quantities.
   • Of the remaining total (don’t forget to pull the band quantity!)set aside a fixed amount that you’ll be offering for pre-order.
   • Sell your pre-orders from this quantity. You should maybe even sit on a small number of records until you’re sure that everything sorts itself out: better to make them available later than to fuck over folks that gave you money in good faith.
7. Ship pre-orders at the same time you ship to distros. People who pre-order gave you their money before anyone else. They should at least get the record before folks who didn’t pre-order.
8. Respond to folks who’ve ordered your record to let them know that they’ve either a) succeeded in purchasing the record and it will be shipping to them around specified date or b) you sold out of the record and they’ll have the option to have their money refunded or wait for a repress. Email works very well for these types of communications (using the contact information in your master list outlined in #4, above). Bulk email works great, just try to remember that putting your recipients in the BCC field is the accepted etiquette. You may be able to get away with poor communication if you’ve developed a reputation for your bad-ass mail room work-ethic. You should assume, however, that you in fact haven’t.
9. This isn’t actually a pre-order rule, but: please consider the relative demand for a particular record when deciding how large of a run to press. No one wants to over run records, but 300 is really a no-brainer for most bands. Flake-ily produced, sub-200 copy editions with hand done art should really be the domain of artist self-releases.

If you are unable to do all of the above, I strongly encourage you to wait until you receive finished copies of the record before making it available for sale. If you have the intention to continue to put out records for an extended period of time, the trust and rapport you build with your customers will pay handsomely. In all fairness, I probably couldn’t pull off all-of-the-above, but I also won’t be taking your pre-orders.