TGIF, WG2E-Land!
Y’all asked for it, so here we go…
Ebook Boxed Set Tips and How Tos
1. What is an Ebook Boxed Set?
An Ebook Boxed Set is one Ebook file (whether for Kindle, epub platforms or Smashwords, etc.) which contains several books within that single file. So, your reader simply makes one purchase/one download, and they have several books to read! 
Here are a few examples:
2. Why spend the time and money creating one?
The answer is in the numbers!
Since releasing my first Ebook Boxed Set in December 2011, I’ve made over $50,000 on just that one product alone (6 Books for $2.99). I’ve now released two more sets – one with 3 books and a prequel for $2.99 and a giant set with 9 books for $4.99, and I’m currently making between $100 and $150 PER DAY just on those three Boxed Sets.
3. How do I create an Ebook Boxed Set?
They’re really very simple create. I tell my format team at 52 Novels which books I’d like included in the set (as they already have all of the files for each one individually). I have two new covers made for the set (more on that below) and write a new note to my readers about the set (which I include at the front of the file), and that’s it!
If you format your own books, simply combine all of your files into one file. You’ll want to do a title page for each book.
4. What about Ebook Boxed Set Covers? Anything out of the ordinary I should know?
You need two covers for each Boxed Set – one 3D and one 2D. Why? Because, at this time, some platforms (like Smashwords) won’t accept a 3D cover, and they claim a few of the channels they upload to like Apple won’t take 3D Covers either.
Here’s the difference between 3D and 2D: 3D covers look three-dimensional like a real “Boxed Set” would (and just really pop on a computer screen) whereas 2D are flat images. Keep in mind that the 2D covers still have to show that the file is a set of books with all titles listed on that 2D image.
3D examples:
***Note: I started adding the gorgeous gift bows into these covers because I think it instantly makes the reader think about “gifting” this set as well as buying it as a to-me-from-me.
2D examples:
5. What price range should I list them at?
What I’ve found is that of all products, your Ebook Boxed Sets are the ones you want to use to treat your readers to the biggest bang for the buck. These can be HUGE volume sellers, so put ‘em at a price that’s attractive (to boost your visibility) and also gives you the 70% royalty, and they could turn into your golden cash cows. My sweet spot is the $2.99 to $4.99 range, but you can also, for limited times, lower them.
For example, Gemma Halliday and I had a ton of fun last holiday season with our Boxed Sets. I surged ahead of her on the bestseller lists (my first Bootscootin’ Boxed Set – 6 books for $2.99 – hit Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s Top 100 Bestseller Lists across all genres – so “the” Top 100 – and ended up #2 on Amazon’s Movers and Shakers List as well as became the #1 B&N Pubit book, making me around $14,000 per month, at the time. Gemma then put her first set of 5 books at 99 Cents (normally priced at $9.99) and clobbered me. LOL!!!
These were our golden cows for sure!!! Right time. Right prices. Not many people there with us. Here’s the scoop:
Basically what you want to do is make sure that your reader gets a nice price break if they buy your set versus buying each of your books individually.
6. How many books should I include in an Ebook Boxed Set?
I’ve done as few as three plus a prequel (so four total) and now a set with 9 books – including 4 novels, 1 Christmas novella, 2 short story prequels and 2 stand alone short stories
7. Can I mix-in books from different series and different genres in the same Boxed Set?
I sure did with that first golden cow set and wow has it worked to bring my readers from my first series right into the second one! I included in that set – my debut trilogy as well as the first two books in my next series and a stand-alone, cross-pollinated (characters carried over from the other two series) short story.
8. How do I market Ebook Boxed Sets?
I really push them as “the best way” to dive into my D. D. Scott-ville World of Books and to treat others to my quirky crazy adventures too (as in Ebook Gifting). Check out the page I dedicate to them on my website:
http://ddscottville.blogspot.com/p/ebook-boxed-sets.html
It even starts with this message:
If you’re new to my D. D. Scott-ville Books, here’s the perfect way to be in-the-pages from Book One all the way through till my Most Recent Releases…
Ebook Boxed Sets
Where you can just one-click-buy and have several Ebooks on your Reader!!!
***Ebook Boxed Sets are also the perfect way to Ebook Gift the readers on your gift-giving lists!!!***
I also have had them featured on fabulous Ereader-centric sites like ENT (Ereader News Today) which has over 400,000 Facebook Fans alone!!!
And definitely consider releasing them each holiday season (I shoot for right around Thanksgiving each year) so readers can treat themselves as well as Ebook Gift your sets to all of the readers on their holiday shopping lists!!!
Oh, and that fabulous greeting I mentioned above that headlines the Boxed Set Page on my site also goes into the note to readers I write in each new release. If they’ve tried one of my books and loved it, I want them to know they can buy all the others in my bargain-priced boxed sets!
9. When do I release an Ebook Boxed Set?
As soon as I have at least three books in a series, they now get their own Boxed Set. Then, I do various compilation sets too, meaning I might put the first three books of one set in with the first two of another. If you write shorter books, like I do, you can also get away with giant sets (like my new 9 book set) because your file size is still manageable.
10. Are there any must dos as far as Ebook Boxed Set formatting?
Make sure you have a fabulous, easy to navigate Table of Contents so your readers can go right to the particular book they want to start with.
Okay…there you have it…all of my Ebook Boxed Set secrets!
It’s Your Turn, WG2E-Land Peeps: Ask me any questions you’d like about these sets, and please, if you have your own Ebook Boxed Sets available, share your secrets to success using this type of product…
The Best of Ebook Boxed Set Wishes — D. D. Scott
D. D. Scott is an Amazon and Barnes and Noble Top 100 Bestselling Author and a four-time Amazon Movers and Shakers List Author. She’s also a Writer’s Go-To-Gal for Muse Therapy and Indie Epublishing, the Co-Founder of The WG2E- The Writer’s Guide to E-Publishing, and the Founder of The RG2E – The Reader’s Guide to E-publishing. You can get all the scoop on her, her books, her Online Classes and Live Workshops, plus juicy tidbits too from her new cyber home…D. D. Scott-ville.
Hi D.D.,
Thanks for shedding the light on how the boxed sets work. And congrats on such fantastic sales with them!
U betchya, Sheri, and thanks bunches!
They truly can be total golden cow products!!!
Thanks for the great information. I have one question: why are the 3D books backwards? If you line up three books, the cover would be on the right. Is there a particular reason you decided to reverse this?
Diane, I think the cover you are referring to would actually be the outside of the “box” for the set not any one book within the “box”. At least that’s how I see it and have seen them both ways. I actually just had one done for my weight loss set and it’s the same way – I’ll post the link so you can see…hopefully that is okay.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0083238G0/
I still need to add to the title. I have another box set under that same author. Actually an earlier post you did, D. D. really inspired me with some new ideas for box sets. Thanks!
Paula
Glad to hear you’re doing Boxed Sets too, Paula! U Go, Girl!!!
Thanks so much D.D.
P.S. I love getting your post in my inbox – one of the few I click thru on.
Sure thing, Paula!
What an honor to be a “click-thru” too!
Great question, Diane! The answer? I’d never really thought about it. I liked the direction I went with because I could read it with ease.
Hi DD,
As a newbie into the ebook publishing world, I just want to let you know how much I love your site! Such a great resource! I never miss a post, and pin most of them. Thanks, and keep it up!!!
Thanks sooo very much, Ferris, and Welcome to The WG2E!!! And thanks too for sharin’ The WG2E Luv!!!
Nothin’ Beats Writers Helping Writers Reach Readers!!!
Yea!!! Thank you, couldn’t have come at a better time for me, DeeDee. You’re a wonderful woman!
I’d like to add Exclusive Content to my boxed sets to expand the series to include scenes not seen before in my contemporary romances and to expand the world building in my Vampyre series. I know that if I do that I’ll need a separate ISBN number for the boxed sets. Did you use a new ISBN number for your sets?
Christine xx
I don’t even mess with ISBN’s most of the time, CC…just on Smashwords because they give you one for FREE, although I’ve always paid the $9.95 there to get my own name on them till they stopped offering that. I don’t get ISBNs for any of the other platforms. Since I don’t do print books, and libraries don’t need ISBNs for Ebooks, I don’t bother with them. The only thing that I know of that they’re used for these days is for tracking sales in large paid-by-subscriber databases like BookScan.
Luuuvvv the Exclusive Content idea, and technically, I think you’d need a new ISBN with or without that because each Boxed Set is its own product, separate from buying each book individually.
So I take it you get a new ISBN for each boxed set right?
I do, LM.
My understanding is that each product is just that…its own product and would require its own ISBN.
I love box sets. I plan to do my first one in a couple of months for my YA angel series, adding a short diary story after each one. Need to write those additions first.
Excellent, Julie!
I always do bonus excerpts in each of my books and of course include those in the Boxed Sets too.
I LOVE my box set! It’s selling nicely as its own separate product, and I never would have thought of doing that without the advice here on WG2E. For those authors who have 3+ books, I highly recommend boxing ‘em up and watching another source of revenue flow in! And readers love the idea of a deal (don’t we all?).
It is all about increasing your revenue streams, Riley! Excellent point! Each Boxed Set is a new stream!!!
Glad to hear you’re having success with ‘em too!!!
Hi D.D. – perfect timing on your post! I just read you don’t do print book, but have come across any information on how to get the ‘box’ for print boxed sets?
Great question, Terra! Let’s see…how ’bout all of you WG2E-Land Peeps who use CreateSpace for your print copies…can they do Boxed Sets too?! I haven’t seen any from them, Terra, but that certainly doesn’t mean they’re not available…
If the books are short, maybe publish within a single cover as an anthology? Over the years (i.e., back in the old days pre-computer), particularly with short story writers, I always looked for anthologies from my favorite writers. It’s not quite the same, but you can still do things with the cover to show more than one book is inside. Although younger people who read nothing but digital may not recognize the term, I think most people do still know what an anthology is, so if that’s prominent in the title, you’ll catch the bargain hunters who realize that it’s a multi-volume work.
Interesting that you brought up the whole “anthology” element, SK. Wow have I learned that most of today’s readers have no idea what an anthology is…by that term anyway. They simply do not. I’ve asked a ton of them, and a bunch have also asked me what that means! Authors know the term and look for them, but readers definitely do NOT.
In fact, I would go so far to say that any type of collection you publish would do better called anything but an “anthology”…so “short story collection” or our beloved “Boxed Sets” with the fabulous 3D Covers (and yes, I do luv what Laura did to make my 2D more 3D with the covers shoved in the snow banks…LOL!).
I know that all of the platforms have an “anthology” category, but that’s because the developers are publishing peeps who know that term. Readers just totally don’t get that at all!
D.D.
Such wonderful advice here, and in all your other posts. One question: do you ever include a just released new book in your boxed sets? How does this affect your single book sales if you do that?
Excellent question, Judith!!!
Yes I do include what I would call recent releases (by that I mean releases from a month to two months old). For example, I released my Stuck with a Series Boxed Set #1 in January, and the Christmas Novella included in that set had just come out in December.
What I generally find is that peeps will “find” the first book in the series, and then if they like it, go right on and buy the full set. That said, I still sell a ton of single copies too, but I think that’s because I’ve kept them at the bargain price of 99 Cents.
Also, because I do what I like to call genre mash-ups, readers find me in various genre searches…so perhaps they found book two in this series, which has a voodoo element to it and is thus in the paranormal category searches, and buy that one first but then go on and buy the full set which is more of a police procedural slant.
Here are some real number examples just on Amazon Kindle US for the month of March so far:
Stuck with a Stiff = 155 Copies Sold
Stuck with a Spell = 59
Stuck with Sleigh Bells = 23
Stuck with a Series Boxed Set #1 = 43
Ah DD! This is the perfect post! Totally comprehensive info re box sets. Thank you so much for sharing! I especially liked learning that you mix and match ( short stories, novels, etc.) to make a set. Also appreciated keeping the combined length in mind when it comes to total file size.
Yayyy, Dianne! Glad you found the scoop you need!!! Cheers!!!
I released my Joe Bruno’s Mobsters – Six Volume Set last September and it’s doing very well. I included Mobsters, Gangs, Crooks and Other Creeps Volume 1-3 which are full length books. And three other true cime half-books. $2.99 was the sweet spot price.
I’ve finished Mobsters Volume 4 and as soon as I finish volume 5 in a about 6 weeks, I’ll do an eight book boxed set.
Then when I finish Volume 6, I do a three book boxed set of Volumes 4-6.
Finally, when I finish Volume 7, I’ll do a ten book boxed set.
After that, I’m open to all suggestions.
Al I got all these ideas from D.D. Scott on this wonderful website.
Thanks D.D.! I owe you a drink!
Go, Joe, Go!!!
I luuuvvv your Mobster stories and will definitely be moving right onto your Boxed Sets as soon as I finish Volume I.
And woohoo will I ever take that drink…how ’bout a Black Russian?! Cheers!!!
D.D. Black Russians are fine. As long as we don’t have to drink them in Siberia.
You gotta deal, Joe! Cheers!!!
I love all your covers, but when I was scanning through the ones above, I have to say that the Stuck with Series cover with the three books stuck in the snow brought me to an abrupt halt and made me laugh. That is so cool (accidental pun).
Thanks, D.D. for all the great ideas.
Sure thing, SK! Great pun, btw!!! I luuuvvv how Laura stuck those puppies in the snow drifts too!!!
Thanks for sharing. I don’t think I have enough books yet to do a boxed set. I did just put out a short story collection relating to my first two e-books called “Three Strikes–You’re In Love.”
Why not combine your first two Ebooks with your short stories into one Boxed Set, Nancy? That might work!!!
I wouldn’t have thought of doing three very different books in a boxed set…thanks for the heads up! Now to get my act together and email my cover designer. LOL
Go, Pepper, Go!!!
Three very different books would work, especially if they’re each the first in a series, for example…what a wonderful cross-genre sampler for your readers!!!
Great stuff, and congrats on the fabby sales of yours. I love boxed sets! I’ve released 2 of them. My romantic comedy boxed set has 2 books, and my Amber Fox Mystery Box Set has 3.
WooHooo, Sibel! Go, Girl, Go! And thanks bunches for the sweet sales shout-out!!!
Great covers, D.D.! I see that I need to make some improvements on mine. I’m glad the low pricing is working for you; I can’t bring myself to charge less than $9.99 for mine, which is still a savings from buying separately…but my books tend to be longer in length; one is over 100K words.
No worries on your price point, Bettye…it’s whatever works for you. Many authors, like Gemma, normally seem to price their sets between $6.99 and $9.99, but lower them for a limited period to boost visibility and boy does that work if you go down to the 99 Cent to $2.99 points.
Wonderful information. I want to do a boxed set for the holidays this year, and I wasn’t sure how to go about it. Now I know. Thank you!
D.D., I took my Nook Tablet to bed with me last night, and I searched your name for advice for dealing with bad reviews (because I got a real stinker on Amazon last night). Thank you for telling me it was ok, and to wear my big girl panties. I put them on, and I feel better today.
Of course, that article brought me here, and what a wealth of information there is! I can’t believe I haven’t seen this site before. I’ve been reading archives all evening.
My first book went free permanently at Amazon on the evening of Feb. 25, and hit #1 under Women Sleuths for the next four days. The book has been holding between #3 and #4 since. Downloads have been over 18,000, and I’m overwhelmed. This is all too new for me, and I don’t know what any of it means. I don’t know how to capitalize on the visibility, or if there isn’t anything I can do. I’m not asking you to take time to give me advice; I’ll keep reading the archives here, and I expect I will find answers.
I’m excited to see the people involved here. I’ve read several of your books, with the latest being Stuck with a Stiff (after meeting David Slegg at WordPress). I’ve read Gemma Halliday’s High Heels Series, and I recently finished Gordon Kessler’s Knight’s Big Easy.
I’ll definitely be grabbing one of your buttons for my blog!
Big Girl Panties sooo work, Maddie! ‘Course wine and chocolate help too!
And I’m thrilled you’ve found The WG2E! Welcome to WG2E-Land!
I hear ya on the overwhelmed arena…been there done that and still get there occasionally. No worries though ’cause that’s just part of being an Indie Epublished Author.
If you’d like a LOL overview of how the start of my journey looked and felt (with that same HUGE rush once I made my first book FREE), check out my bestselling book: 10 Years and 24 Hours to Indie Epublishing Success
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/10-years-and-24-hours-to-indie-epublishing-success-d-d-scott/1112096668?ean=2940014620055
Again, Welcome to The WG2E and to your very own Indie Epublishing Journey! We’re here to help you anyway we can!!!
Thank you so much! Your book is now on my Nook, and I’ll be reading this weekend. Yay!
I appreciate the warm welcome. I won’t go into details, but it was from reading some of your writing on your previous website (early in 2012) that gave me the courage to write, keep writing, and self-publish. Thank you for being so open and willing to share about your Indie Publishing Journey.
U betchya, Maddie!
For me, it’s all about sharin’ that kinda love!
U Go, Girl!!!
And Happy Reading!!!