Bundle of Joy

While major publishers may push a book at release and expect the bulk of sales in the first couple months, small presses and self-publishers count on the long tail for sales. That means they keep promoting their books for months, even years, with hopes of maintaining steady sales. However, that tail isn’t endless, and at some point small presses and authors start wondering how they can keep those older books alive. Recently I’ve been reading about book bundling as a solution to that problem, and it’s one idea we at Intrigue Publishing are going to want to try, at least with our ebooks.
The most obvious bundling idea is to repackage a series. My first thought is to release the first three Hannibal Jones novels as one ebook. We can make it a great deal for readers to get all 3 at once. It should make it easier for new readers to dive into the series.
I’ve also noticed that this idea sometimes works in reverse. In other words, a writer can break up an older book into several parts. Shorter works seem very popular these days, and this is a way to offer a long story in easy little bits.
For new books I’m also looking at having an older book piggyback on a new release. The older book can be sort of a free bonus for trying the new one. Anything that sounds like a bargain sounds like it’s worth trying to me. Intrigue will release sequels from two of it's authors in the next couple of months. They might be good choices for this idea.
Will this really work?  Well, I haven’t tried it yet,  but I know the new/old books will need the same kind of promotion and marketing as a brand new release. When we’ve got it together we’ll get it rolling and I’ll report the results right here on my blog so stay tuned.
Meanwhile, if you have already tried some sort of bundling, please let us know how it worked for you, and if you’d try it again.