I’m curious… I had the idea put to me of making ALL my books available for one set price. If you were going to buy them that way what would you prefer? A CD, DVD, SD card, or thumb drive?
Or – not at all – wouldn’t buy them that way even at a discount?
I think that selling them as a bundle does not work so well as you would essentially be targeting new readers who have no reason to purchase all of your books with the most expensive option. (costs more than a single book) Anyone who has previously read a book of yours (and would be more likely to blindly purchase all of your works based on the ones already read) , likely already owns one or more, so they would likely already own some of the books in the bundle, which means that the price would have to take that into account. (ie the discount would need to make it cheaper than buying all of the books minus one or two)
I think this sort of thing works better if:
1 You have a lot of books published, but in which case you would normally see omnibus editions of two or three books only, not all of the books.
2 You have previously published paper books and are now offering ebook versions for readers who already have paper copies, but not electronic ones. In this case, what I have seen if a cd/dvd included with the paper copy which contains free ebook copies of some of the books. (Baen has done this)
Also, I don’t think using a physical object (CD, DVD, SD card, or thumb drive) is a good way to do this as you need to have a way to sell this and ship this vs the ease of delivery of an ebook on amazon today. Not sure you could sell an object containing the books via amazon.
Thanks for the thoughts. The point about having paper books makes sense. I’m transitioning the opposite way from many authors. I still don’t have a publishing contract, but I will soon and I’ll discuss this all with the fellow bringing my paper books out. I always liked the Baen CDs.
With regards to paper books – from what I’ve read, it seems like other than maybe a few bestselling authors, ebooks are selling better than paper books these days. Also, I think that self published authors make considerably more than regularly published authors per unit sold when comparing ebooks vs paper books.
I guess that is something to consider when looking into a publishing contract. You will likely also want to retain control over everything you can, including when you can publish, etc as it seems like publishing contracts can be very restrictive and limit the number of books an author publishes. Unless the publishing contract is going to give you advertising and place books in book stores like BN, you may want to consider a POD solution instead. In any case, there are plenty of articles and blogs by authors (self published and otherwise on this subject), so I would advise you to read them if you have not already. My impression of what I have read is that in general self publishing is the way to go for 97-99% of all self published authors. Hopefully the contract you have negotiated/are negotiated has taken all of this into account already.
I hang out with a bunch of authors – some with conventional publishers and some indie – even a couple who manage to do both. A few of them under several names in different genres. I’m amazed at the sort of mind that can write historical – how to – porn – science fiction and poetry. I’m starting to think a couple of them have a multiple personality. But I won’t call it a disorder. They so far approve of what I have negotiated.
I think that selling them as a bundle does not work so well as you would essentially be targeting new readers who have no reason to purchase all of your books with the most expensive option. (costs more than a single book) Anyone who has previously read a book of yours (and would be more likely to blindly purchase all of your works based on the ones already read) , likely already owns one or more, so they would likely already own some of the books in the bundle, which means that the price would have to take that into account. (ie the discount would need to make it cheaper than buying all of the books minus one or two)
I think this sort of thing works better if:
1 You have a lot of books published, but in which case you would normally see omnibus editions of two or three books only, not all of the books.
2 You have previously published paper books and are now offering ebook versions for readers who already have paper copies, but not electronic ones. In this case, what I have seen if a cd/dvd included with the paper copy which contains free ebook copies of some of the books. (Baen has done this)
Also, I don’t think using a physical object (CD, DVD, SD card, or thumb drive) is a good way to do this as you need to have a way to sell this and ship this vs the ease of delivery of an ebook on amazon today. Not sure you could sell an object containing the books via amazon.
Thanks for the thoughts. The point about having paper books makes sense. I’m transitioning the opposite way from many authors. I still don’t have a publishing contract, but I will soon and I’ll discuss this all with the fellow bringing my paper books out. I always liked the Baen CDs.
With regards to paper books – from what I’ve read, it seems like other than maybe a few bestselling authors, ebooks are selling better than paper books these days. Also, I think that self published authors make considerably more than regularly published authors per unit sold when comparing ebooks vs paper books.
I guess that is something to consider when looking into a publishing contract. You will likely also want to retain control over everything you can, including when you can publish, etc as it seems like publishing contracts can be very restrictive and limit the number of books an author publishes. Unless the publishing contract is going to give you advertising and place books in book stores like BN, you may want to consider a POD solution instead. In any case, there are plenty of articles and blogs by authors (self published and otherwise on this subject), so I would advise you to read them if you have not already. My impression of what I have read is that in general self publishing is the way to go for 97-99% of all self published authors. Hopefully the contract you have negotiated/are negotiated has taken all of this into account already.
I hang out with a bunch of authors – some with conventional publishers and some indie – even a couple who manage to do both. A few of them under several names in different genres. I’m amazed at the sort of mind that can write historical – how to – porn – science fiction and poetry. I’m starting to think a couple of them have a multiple personality. But I won’t call it a disorder. They so far approve of what I have negotiated.