As explained in this article, owners of the most recently announced title are given an opportunity to place their order two days before the public pre-order. This system grew out of requests from customers who wanted to match their number and/or letter to the next publication.
Once the Matching Pre-Order period has ended at 8am on the Saturday of the week of announcement, depending on how many copies are available of the Numbered, Lettered and/or Roman Numeral editions, we may sell these copies through a lottery system. The lottery is open until 12pm on the Monday following the public pre-order and winners are selected at random.