If you’re always looking for ways to boost sales at Amazon (hey, who isn’t?), you might spend a lot of time browsing the bestseller charts over there to see what other authors are doing. If it’s working for them, it might just work for you, right? Well, you may have noticed… boxed sets are in right now.
Authors are taking the first three or four books in a series (sometimes more), bundling them together into a collection, and putting them on sale for a discount (sometimes a big discount). I’ve seen these sets going for as low as 99 cents (on books the author might otherwise sell separately for $2.99 or $4.99), and as you might guess, they’re doing well. I just took a look at the bestselling romances in the Kindle store and four out of the Top 20 are boxed sets. Under Holiday Romance, four of the Top 6 are collections.
Readers are jumping at the chance to get not just one book for 99 cents but a whole set. It’s a great deal for them, but what about the author?
My own limited experience
I ran a sale on my own Emperor’s Edge, Books 1-3 Collection last May, combining a Bookbub ad with a 99-cent weekend, and I had some great results myself, selling over 1500 copies of a book that usually sells about 20 copies a month. Monetarily speaking, I came out ahead on the sale, plus I had a lot more people than usual going on to check out the following books in the series (since I have seven in the series, running a sale on the first three still leaves me room to make some full-priced author money).
I put the price back to $7.99 at the end of the two-sale, which is what a lot of authors do, but others are riding the wave and leaving their sets at 99 cents until the momentum fades. Even though you would think this is ridiculous and would result in a loss of money, if you’re suddenly in the Top 100 or 200 at Amazon, when your books are usually ranking in the ten thousands, you might still end up making more money. You also have the opportunity to gather more fans than you might during a typical sales period.
Ed Robertson has done this with his Breakers boxed set, and it’s been in the Top 200 overall since September (as I write this in early December, it’s still ranking 181). Not everyone is going to be that much of a hit (romance is obviously always hot, and dystopian is rocking for a lot of people right now too), but it might be worth giving it a try. A 99-cent boxed set represents a huge value to the reader, thus adding to the appeal of your work.
One thing I didn’t do back in May, which seems to be key in making these boxed sets appear extra enticing, is upload a 3D image of the set to Amazon. I’m planning to do that and to revamp my blurb the next time I run a sale on the EE1-3 set (probably when I release the new book late this winter). I asked my cover designer to make a 3D version for me, but for the DIY-ers out there, here’s a guide (some people also hire folks on Fiverr to do this for them).
What if you don’t have a series?
If you don’t have enough books out yet where a boxed set makes sense, you could try going in with other writers to create a mixed-author collection. I’ve seen these do well. If you get everyone to put a Book 1 or stand-alone novel in the pot, this can work nicely when they’re all in the same genre or conform to a similar theme.
What are your thoughts on boxed sets? Yay or nay?
I think boxed sets are a good idea, but as you pointed out, you need to have enough in the series for carryover to work. That’s why I’ve not done any yet, and I don’t even plan to until I have at least 3–4 books out. (One series I’m working on was originally going to be 4 books, but now it’s going to be 5 or 6—but one of those will be a prequel that’ll probably be novella length, and that’s not including the novel ideas I have set centuries earlier and later.
Multi-author boxed sets can be interesting, kinda like a multi-author anthology—but again, you need enough backlist already available to make it worth your while.
Why?
You want readers to remember you, so you ideally want them to have at least 3 titles available for those who love the story to snatch up.
Carradee – Yah, it definitely helps to have other products to sell, and that should be the goal for any author.
But, authors who only have one book (or just one boxed set) can still benefit! They just need to clearly tell reader sat the end of the book to visit their website and sign up for their mailing list to be the first to know about their book releases. Once they get people onto their mailing list, they will be able to promote future books to them!
I keep seeing these boxed sets and I’m floored that some of these authors have so many books that they can give away 8 at a time for 99 cents. I’m still trying to finish my first, lol. I hope there’s room for me out there!
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Thanks for your informative essay (as always), Lindsay.
The recent flood of box sets from indie authors seems to be linked to dropping profits (and dropping prices). As one product type (novels) became flooded and discoverability (i.e. competition) got fiercer, the more savy authors quickly tried to diversify their product type (the box sets).
The problem is that this product area is now starting to get flooded as well and authors novels are dropping even further in value. Selling three novels – in my mind at least – for 99c is frankly nuts in that it’s non-sustainable. The first ones to do it will do well but I think other indie authors are now approaching the tail end on that particular value chain. In general terms, I think it’s much more effective to work on quality, branding and nice market.
I’m part of a multi-author bundle of six Faery-themed novels for .99 cents. We’ve sold close to 25k copies so far, and the bundle is still doing very well at both Amazon and B&N. (Faery Worlds – http://amzn.com/B00DI9D5O8)
For all six of the authors involved, this bundle makes *perfect* sense. All the titles are first books in ongoing series, and make a terrific, themed introduction to readers. Sales of my follow-on books have jumped to new levels, and all of us have found a lot of new readers.
But it has to be part of a strategy. I also have a boxed-set of my trilogy, and, like you did, Lindsay, ran a BookBub ad for it at .99 cents – for a week only. I saw a huge bump in sales and visibility, and the bundle is still selling well (3-4x its previous amounts, though the Faery Worlds success is part of that, too).
I’d advise authors not to jump on the .99 cent bandwagon without a clear idea of *why* you’re doing so. And I’d also tell the naysayers that, no, my books are not being “devalued” by having the first of my series in an awesome book bundle. Especially as the other books are priced at $4.99 and selling well. It’s a tool. Use it wisely. 😉
25,000 copies, and 235 in the Amazon store, that’s awesome! Congrats. 🙂
I obviously need to go find some other steampunk or epic fantasy authors to team of with to give this a try, lol. As long as I can foist the accounting off on someone else. I’d think that would be a bit of a headache with so many people in there.
Hey, Lindsay.
I read your blog reguarly, though I don’t post a lot of comments. I usually just go and research the topics more in depth.
But this topic has me intrigued. If my books are available on CreateSpace, how would I be able to sell box sets? It seems that each book would have to be purchased individually.
Are you suggesting to “box set” only the digital versions?
Heya William,
Yes, really just referring to ebooks here. I don’t think CreateSpace offers anything like this, and you wouldn’t be able to give the big discount with paperbacks. I’ve heard LightningSource has a few more options, but I think you’d have to go with a specialty press and do a full print run to do a collector’s edition boxed set or something of that ilk.
I’ll try to learn more about this in the future, as I’d love to offer something like that for my readers.
YES!
Scanning my sister’s Christmas list this year on Amazon.com, I saw she put “The Emperor’s Edge” (paperback) on there! My first though…I know what I’m buying her this holiday!
My second thought…I wonder if I can get them all in a box set!?!
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I’d love to do a bundle/box set but I’ve run into the problem of having no good price point with Amazon for one. My books sell for 6.99 each, so a set of 3 of my books would be priced too low (in my opinion) at the 9.99 cutoff for the 70% royalty. And I’m just not sure a 2-book box set for a 3 book trilogy that isn’t going to expand into a bigger series for another few months makes any sense. So I’m kind of stuck, wishing I could do a box set, but not willing to discount it so heavily while there aren’t additional books in the series to benefit from the sales. Maybe in the future I’ll be able to do that, but right now, it just doesn’t make sense.
I’d like to do a bundle with other authors. The Twisted Garden is a craft “How To” book. How to use repurposed household items to make yard & garden art.
If I do a bundle with other craft authors how does the sales money get dispersed among the different authors’ accounts?
Just wondering if anyone can shed some light on the process.
Thanks
Cindi
Hey Lindsay! Excellent post. My question is how do you go about promoting a new box set. With no reviews, ad companies like bookbub and bookblast won’t run ads for it. Do you just put it out for a while and wait for some reviews to come in? Then do a heavy discount when you can secure an ad? Thanks!
I have two books currently published on Amazon Kindle, and two more being released in the next two weeks. Two of my books are from the same series (a small-town story based around the local volunteer fire department), and I’m 7500wds into book three of this series at the moment. My plan is to bundle the first four books, of this 7-8 book series. I’ll still sell separately, but offer the bundle at a discount.
I have been playing around with pricing, because I’ve read of many authors seeing a huge jump in sales when they reduce to $0.99. I tried this over the Christmas holiday, hoping lots of people would get Kindles for Christmas and want to fill them with cheap books. My sales were very disappointing, and I feel I actually make more money with my regular price of $4.99 right now.
I think the boxed set will come in handy when I get a book #5 in the series. My plan will be to deeply discount the boxed set, at the same time book #5 is free through Kindle Select. My reasoning is that if the people who download for free like the book, they’ll be happy to get the earlier books for cheap.
I’m just glad the Amazon Kindle program allows us to change our pricing at will, because it makes it easy to experiment and find out what really works.