How far in advance does CD Now generally put preorders up for purchase?
 

They are always behind the game. Anyone know how far in advance they normally put them up. I am waiting on a 12/4 release (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and I want to include it in order this week just in case they stop offerering those 15% coupons.

They're generally a few days behind thanks to inept data entry from their current supplier. This should change in the coming weeks, though.

It seems to be completely random.

One time I asked when Monty Python and the Holy Grail SE would be added to the site (they already had the VHS listed) and the response I got was that they hadn't heard that their distributor hadn't told them that was being released. Of course it showed up the following week.

I haven't checked them recently, but I recall that they usually do preorders up to 2 months in advance.

Tower Records is worse -- they only do 28 days in advance.

It used to be that way, but it was changed...now any title that is announced will be listed (see Tron SE, Pearl Harbor DC). They just show up a wee bit later than the other guys, but like I said, that will change shortly. They are still cheaper anyway.

Kind of off topic but how is CDNow in terms of shipping pre-ordered items? Two days ago I reserved a copy of Tenchi Universe Collection which is due October 9th, and I'm wondering when I should expect the package to arrive. Any of you have experience with this?

Typically, pre-orders are shipped the Friday before street date. At least, that has always been the case for me (and others on this forum).

Their cst service claims that they put preorders at least 1 - 1 1/2 month before it's release date on the site...

They usually ship the DVDs the Friday before street data, but last week I was supposed to have 3 anime titles shipped to me (Gatekeepers vol. 1, Ceres vol. 3, and Magic Users Club TV vol. 1). All of them went to backorder and they haven't shipped yet.

That doesn't sound very promising, but Tenchi is distributed by Pioneer. And if Akira: SE showed us anything, is that they're probably the most competant anime DVD distributor (all of the other ones are hit and miss at best). That being said, I'm keeping faith that I'll recieve it next Tuesday. :)