Perhaps this has been done with other books, but Pre-Order ‘Locked On’ by Tom Clancy and Mark Greaney read by Lou Diamond Phillips is the first I’ve noticed:
It’s a 44-minute recording of the first three chapters, with the description leading with: “Simply pre-order Locked On now and you’ll get to hear the book’s first three chapters before anyone else. And when the complete book – which is more than 20 hours long – releases on December 13, it’ll be waiting for you in My Library.”
What do my fellow listeners think? I’m mainly interested in pre-orders as a source of more concrete release date information and availability notification, rather than actually buying titles ahead of their release date. However, this “3 chapter” sneak preview feature on top is a pretty interesting and tempting carrot.