>Done...
>
>How do advance orders via Amazon affect publishing-industry
>decisions about such things as first print runs and desire to spend
>money pushing books through the pipeline?
I can only speak from watching things at Verso, but Verso is distributed by Norton, a real big publisher, so the experience is probably representative. All bookstores submit advance orders based on catalog announcements and the work of the field sales force. Amazon.com is big, but so are Borders and B&N. Norton reports the advance orders pretty frequently, so there's good info available at the time the print run is decided on. So Amazon is one voice among several important ones, and I don't think they've changed things that much.
The thing everyone's trying to figure out now is e-books.
Doug