Ebook Boxed Sets—Bulk Buying and Selling

Christmas on Main Street

A little more than six weeks ago I collaborated with 10 authors and helped create Christmas on Main Street, an anthology of 11 Christmas stories. Most are novels. Some are novellas. There are a few short stories. We were each responsible for our own covers and editing, but one saintly author made our cover, another did all the formatting, one was responsible for running the ads, and two are handling the money. We are all promoting.

For the last month, our anthology has bounced around number one on three of Amazon’s lists and has pretty consistently hung around #50 on Amazon’s bestseller list over all. Here are the stats as of right now—December 18^th, 3p.m.

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #57 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Holidays

#1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Inspirational

#3 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Romance > Collections & Anthologies

Why do I think our collection is rocking the lists?

It’s a bargain. 11 books for .99 cents. It’s hard to beat the economics.

It’s timely. (Hey, it’s Christmas. People like Christmas stories.)

It’s got a great cover.

Something that I didn't give much thought to, but in hindsight I think makes a huge difference is we didn't know each other when we started. We don't belong to the same (physical) writing groups. For the most part, we don't even live in the states. In fact, Susan lives in Canada. This means that we don't all drink out of the same reader pool.

And we’re all promoting. Last week when I was too sick to lift my head after an almost lethal confrontation with a dose of cold medicine (Nyquil is no longer invited into my house) my writer friends continued to work their marketing magic.

Why did I do this? It wasn't for money. I didn't know if I would make enough money to buy a doughnut. My goal was/is to gain readers. No one is going to read my books if they don't know I write books. Thousands of readers now have a copy of one of my novels on their ebook device. 

Six weeks and more than thirty thousand sales later, I can say:

I never could have done this on my own.  Even if I had 11 books to bundle, I wouldn’t want to. I don’t want to give all of my books away for 2.7 cents each.

I’ve seen a dramatic uptick in the sales of my other books, more than a 200% increase in sales. Which may sound bigger than it is considering my lackluster sales, but yeah—a 200% increase looks good on any spread sheet.

I have learned a lot from the flood of emails from the other writers in our set. They have marketing know-how and savvy that I’m still trying to grasp.

And I will definitely do this again.

Quotes from The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

There are just so many gosh darn books out there. A lot of them are free. Everyday some bestselling author steps away from traditional publishing and joins the swelling ranks of the Indies. I can’t blame them, but I wish they would go back to their publishing houses. Who is going to pay for a book by an unheard of author when they can download an author with a household name for the same price?

Indies have lots of advantages over traditional published authors and the biggest and probably most powerful is the price point advantage. We can offer loss liters all over the place. Spread 'em around like fertilizer.

The second most powerful advantage is genre-bending. Indies can take risks, and the good indies do. Gone are the gate keepers and the bean counters. For most indies, if one book isn’t profitable that’s okay…they’ve got a million more stories in their heads and not a lot to lose.

But the most powerful tool in the traditional publishing tool shed is publicity. They know people. They hire people. They can hog the window at the book stores, and flood the Books section of the LA Times.

So what’s an indie to do?

M U S T   F I N D   T H E   T I P P I N G   P O I N T.

Thank you Mr. Gladwell for the inspiration.

The Tipping Point Quotes 

“The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.” 
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“Emotion is contagious.” 
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“To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.” 
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“There are exceptional people out there who are capable of starting epidemics. All you have to do is find them.” 
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“If you want to bring a fundamental change in people's belief and behavior...you need to create a community around them, where those new beliefs can be practiced and expressed and nurtured.” 
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“A study at the University of Utah found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else, he’ll say it is because he and his friend share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the two of them on their attitudes, you’ll find out that what they actually share is similar activities. We’re friends with the people we do things with, as much as we are with the people we resemble. We don’t seek out friends, in other words. We associate with the people who occupy the same small, physical spaces that we do.” 
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“That is the paradox of the epidemic: that in order to create one contagious movement, you often have to create many small movements first.” 
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“There is a simple way to package information that, under the right circumstances, can make it irresistible. All you have to do is find it.” 
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“A book, I was taught long ago in English class, is a living and breathing document that grows richer with each new reading.” 
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“Economists often talk about the 80/20 Principle, which is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. In most societies, 20 percent of criminals commit 80 percent of crimes. Twenty percent of motorists cause 80 percent of all accidents. Twenty percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of all beer. When it comes to epidemics, though, this disproportionality becomes even more extreme: a tiny percentage of people do the majority of the work.” 
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“A critic looking at these tightly focused, targeted interventions might dismiss them as Band-Aid solutions. But that phrase should not be considered a term of disparagement. The Band-Aid is an inexpensive, convenient, and remarkably versatile solution to an astonishing array of problems. In their history, Band-Aids have probably allowed millions of people to keep working or playing tennis or cooking or walking when they would otherwise have had to stop. The Band-Aid solution is actually the best kind of solution because it involves solving a problem with the minimum amount of effort and time and cost.” 
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  If you have found your tipping point, I would love to hear it.