At least one very good reason to pre-order Trade World

In the event that you’re short of time, here’s the most important bit: if you pre-order Trade World between now and Sept 2 and then email preorder@edmundconway.com with a screengrab of the pre-order… I’ll personally send you an exclusive bonus essay!

What no one warns you before you embark down the road of writing a book is that as you approach publication date there are two slightly excruciating things you will be forced to do. The first happens not long after your cherished manuscript has been delivered to the publisher. Might you possibly, they will gingerly ask, be able to talk to any prominent authors or celebrities you know to try to secure what is known in the business as an “endorsement” or “blurb”?

Blurbs are those quotes you’ll often see on the cover of a book lavishing praise on said volume. Sometimes they are clipped from a positive review of the book but, just as often, they are procured through what you might call the “grey market”: an author or publisher emails someone whose name they think might help shift a book and asks them to have a look. I sometimes get these emails. They are nearly as excruciating to read as they are to write, since invariably no-one wants to call a spade a spade and admit what’s really going on here. So the publisher asks if you’d like to “take a look” at a proof and, well, hopes that the reply contains a positive endorsement. I usually respond quite bluntly: “yes I’ll have a read and give you a blurb if I like it”.

I’ve always thought the weird economic ecosystem of blurb-giving and taking would make for an interesting PhD topic (please comment below if such a thing has already been written and I’ve missed it) because in many respects it is utterly, utterly irrational. Everyone knows that for the most part the endorsements on the cover of a book are not exactly scientific proof of its genius.

With that in mind, some publishers - most notably Simon & Schuster in the US- have even banned blurbs altogether, which if nothing else will provide some useful data for whoever ends up writing that PhD. But the vast majority of publishers plough on and, for all that I too find them a little squeamish and irrational, these days I sort of see the point…

Because if you start from the position that getting someone to pick up and read a book is an increasingly challenging proposition in this era of social media and smartphones and diminishing attention spans, then perhaps anything that helps nudge people in the right direction (namely, to read a book) is perhaps a Good Thing. That’s certainly the way I feel about it. The blurb, then, serves as a sort of behavioural-economic tool. A customer sees a book from an author they don’t know and are about to dismiss it when they see an encouraging quote on the front from an author whose books they have read. Lo and behold, that anchors their expectations. They give the book another look and then they’re tipped over the edge and before they know it they’ve bought it and discovered a new author.

That was certainly the case with Material World, a book that was very nearly not published at all, having been rejected by a number of publishers (though that’s a story for another day) but which went on to become a bestseller. I have little doubt that part of what helped it gradually ratchet up its sales were the incredibly generous blurbs a few authors - including Tim Marshall, Peter Frankopan, Matthew Syed - gave me after I prostrated myself in front of them and asked if they could read it. Was this rational? Dignified?! Hell, no. Were their reviews as brutal as they probably could have been? Surely not. But either way, they helped launch the book and for that I will be forever grateful.

Since then, every so often I have been asked to blurb other authors books and, provided I have the time, it is something I rather like to do. Because, well, I like reading. And while posts like this are all fair and well, I happen to think everyone should read more books, by as many authors as possible. And if blurbs can, even marginally, help that process then, well, that’s sort of the least I can do.

So, yes, Trade World will also be launched into the world next month on a wave of blurbs, generously donated by Amol Rajan, Tim Harford, Matthew Parris, Diane Coyle and Adam Boulton. They have all said some very nice things about the book which you’ll be able to see if you go and pre-order it. It may not be especially rational but, frankly, the more I can do to get my foot in the door of people’s brains, they better!

Pre-order Trade World

That brings me to the other excruciating thing you have to do when you’ve got a new book out: to plead with people to pre-order a copy. Now in some respects this is yet another irrational situation. Why on earth should anyone pre-order a book when all they have to go on are those aforementioned blurbs, before it’s been reviewed by any publications (or on a site like Goodreads)?

Well, there are some prosaic reasons, among them that you, the customer, can usually snag yourself a decent discount and you will get a copy earlier than anyone else. Sometimes you will even get it before official publication date! Also, in the case of Trade World, if you order from Backstory, a wonderful independent bookstore in South London, you can even get a signed and personalised copy(!)

But in practice, the real reason it makes a genuine difference if you pre-order comes back to something else entirely, something not entirely unrelated to the whole blurb thing. The more pre-orders a book has, the more likely retailers are to buy in a decent number of those books wholesale. And the more books they buy the more likely they are to give that title prominent shelf space. And the more shelf space you end up with, the greater the chance you have of the book being sold… and on and on.

In a way that is quite hard to get your head round if you’re outside the publishing world, pre-ordered books are far, far more valuable to the author and publisher than the ones sold after the book has been out for a bit. So yes, I would love you to buy Trade World at some point. But I would especially, especially love you to pre-order it. And I have to be honest: for all that there are a few advantages for you, the customer, actually this is mostly about something else: the money you spend on a pre-order has outsized power in defining the eventual success of a book.

And that matters to me because, well, I happen to think this particular book contributes something quite new to the already somewhat busy literature around trade and supply chains. In much the same way Material World helped many of you see the world of natural resources differently, I think Trade World might be able to do the same thing for international commerce and trade. It turns out many of the preconceptions people have about the way trade, the economy and tariffs work are completely upside down. And the more people grasp this, the greater the chance policymakers approach the next trade war that little bit differently. Oh and also I think the book is quite fun, with all sorts of stories about how everyday objects are actually made - not in theory but in the real world.

But since none of that changes the fact that the act of pre-ordering is often a bit of a leap of faith and since there is rarely much incentive to click the relevant button, I want to make you an offer.

If you pre-order Trade World and email me at preorder@edmundconway.com attaching a proof of purchase, I will send you an exclusive essay I’m in the process of writing, containing bonus material that didn’t make it into the final edition of the book.

All being well I should have the essay ready to send by next weekend. It’s all about bread, the Romans and the biggest factory in the world. And should give you a sense of some of the stories you’ll be reading more about when you finally receive that copy of the book.

So yes, please pre-order. If you liked Material World, you will find yourself back in a familiar place, with countless random stories about rabbit holes you’d never known about, as well as a host of staggering stories you will instantly want to tell your friends. Plus, you will understand the nature of the modern world that bit better than many of those around you. Or at least, that’s the pitch.

Trade World comes out in the UK on September 3: a month today. I think you’ll like it. So, in case I didn’t already mention it, pre-order! You can find a list of places at this link.

Ok, advertisement over. Apologies. But hopefully by now you understand why I’m doing this.

PS Don’t be surprised if you have to wait a few days for a reply to your email/message. But I will get round to them all, I promise. Though NB to preserve sanity I will probably only reply to messages with proof of purchase attached.