Evil Hat Productions has a long-standing promotion in place to drive sales through brick-and-mortar retailers in their "Bits and Mortar" program.  With the official call for preorders for the anticipated release of the Atomic Robo RPG, they are offering an ‘Instant Content Preorder’ for retailers to immediately deliver a PDF version of the game to customers who place a confirmed preorder with a store.
 
Evil Hat released details on the game in March (see "'Atomic Robo' RPG"), and the physical copies are expected to ship from the printer around the second week of June, reaching distribution in late June.  Evil Hat took the opportunity of the preorder announcement to encourage customers to order through their local game store and receive the PDF version as a bonus.  The program has been around since 2010, but with massive industry growth and a larger move to e-publishing in the last few years, the multi-publisher pro-brick-and-mortar program is worth reiterating.
 
"Bits and Mortar grew out of a practice that Evil Hat and a few other publishers were already doing--backing purchases made in brick and mortar game stores with a complimentary matching PDF," said Evil Hat Productions Co-President Fred Hicks.  "We joined forces with those publishers and founded the program to help reach as many customers and stores as we could.  Today we have about 40 publishers participating in the program and over 280 game stores registered, with that number growing steadily."
 
An Evil Hat spokesperson confirmed that in less than 24 hours since launching the preorder, they have received approximately 200 direct orders through their website.  While they don’t know how many of those were preordered through stores, around 25 comps having been already sent out via Bits and Mortar, which translates to 12.5 % of sales.  "Given the short turnaround time, we expect that number to increase significantly as orders are processed," she added.