How to do Box Sets

[Ted]

The two most common types of box set are single-author and multi-author.

For a single-author box set, an author might combine all the books in a series, or might combine the series starters of multiple series, or might simply combine all their standalone titles into a single collection. Smashwords author Anne Marie Novark, for example, created a single-author First in a Series Box Set featuring four of her full-length romance series starters for the value-price of only $2.99. Smart.

For a multi-author box set, multiple authors, usually in the same genre or category, collaborate to publish multiple full-length books or complete short stories in a value-priced bundle.

iBooks store and Smashwords collaborated on box sets and the results have been impressive. From Mark's Blog: "The surge in unit downloads at iBooks continues following Apple's release of iOS8. Using Tuesday's unit downloads as a baseline, Wednesday's unit downloads as I shared yesterday were up 84%. Thursday's unit downloads are up 183% from Tuesday. This is the aggregate average across all Smashwords titles at iBooks. The surge in downloads these last two days have been almost entirely contained to free books, though we did see a slight uptick in dollar sales at iBooks yesterday but not enough to credit to iOS8. It wouldn't be an exaggeration for me to state that Smashwords authors are on track to reach millions of new readers in the next two or three weeks."

Read how to do box sets on Mark's Blog here.... blog.smashwords.com/2014/08/how-to-do-box-sets-at-smashwords-for.html

[vincentberg]

This was interesting, but essentially, it only amounts to turning all your books into a single (badly formatted) single book. I prefer Apple's new approach, which is to offer an entire series (book set) for a set price. If reader's expect to purchase a full series, why have them purchase a single book at a time (at a lower commission). If you want to promote your work, release several first books of a set of series.

Since iBooks offers this (and SW doesn't yet), I plan on removing iBooks as an option on my SW account and posting directly to iBooks. It's more work, but it's a great sales opportunity. You have to join iTunes Connect, but they also offer you the option to sell your books via a card. Imagine walking into a book signing with a pocket full of cards featuring your book. Someone purchases your book and you hand them a card. It changes the entire person-to-person sales transaction. What's more, you no longer have to travel with a trunk full of print copies!

I'm hoping that SW adapts this feature soon (Apple sprang it on everyone when they released iOS 8), but until then ...

[Ted]

It would be a matter of Smashwords adjusting the Marketing & Distribution section coding to create option for a box set. Authors would enter the books to be added to the set and then set a price.

Smashwords could do this so its box sets could coordinate with iBooks and its box sets, but I don't know how Smashwords would integrate this option with other retailers sales coding. It's probably not impossible to get other retailers to accept box sets, but Apple would likely be the easiest to integrate.

Regarding cards, a QR code could do the same thing. I've added various QR codes to business cards I hand out, but can't tell you if they have increased sales.

[vincentberg]

Ted, that's why I decided to remove the iBooks from SW and publish directly to iBooks. As I said, Apple surprised everyone with this approach. I suspect that the other distributors will rush to fill the gap. It'll take a long time for smaller groups like B&N to adopt it, but I wouldn't be surprised it Amazon adopts it soon.

I never really expected SW to adapt quickly to this. Clearly Apple has been sitting on this for some time, springing it like they did because it gives them a clear competitive advantage. If anything, allowing 'box set sales' that only apply to iBooks would help promote sales on Apple devices (not a small market in and of itself). That would speed integration of the service to others as well. But again, that all takes time.

By the way, publishing on Apple is NOT a simple process. You CAN'T do it unless you purchase an up-to-date mac computer (the submission software won't run on any other platform), and the licensing software alone in setting up a Mac environment is prohibitive. I'm still investigating the most cost-effective method of achieving it. ("Say, buddy, could you loan me your state-of-the-art Mac computer for 20 to 30 hours?") <groan>

[Ted]

Hello? Apple? Are you listening? Please send me a Mac Pro. I'll give it a long-term test and review it frequently.