The Power of Book Bundling: How to Turn Your Backlist Into a Marketing Goldmine

If we have , it was in the first year and now we're in our fifth year and so very excited about the show . If you're a new listener , if you just found us , welcome , we are really happy that you're here . I am getting to .

I'm in the final stretch the final , final stretch by the time this show hits , probably the final , final final stretch of the Amazon Author Formula workbook . We have a cover and the interior is being finalized .

I'm really excited about that book , which ties into the conversation of book bundling , because at some point the workbook and the main book will probably be book bundled in some form or fashion . So it was very timely to have this conversation . I also , just very separately , I want to give a shout out listen y'all .

If you're not using the Libby app , you really . It's a great way to get into your libraries and do you don't have . You don't even have to go into like a . People are just like , well , I don't have a library near me , doesn't matter . You can be anywhere in the world actually and get access to books . It's fabulous .

I have so many books on hold on my shelf right now . Amy , it's crazy . Please don't put books on hold that I want , because I'm already waiting nine and ten weeks for some titles , because I'm already waiting nine and 10 weeks for some titles . Have you tried it yet ? Have you used it ?

Because I know when I get really addicted to something , I'm always pestering Amy in text . I'm like you should try this . Have you tried it yet ? Have you tried it yet ? I must be I'm sure . Sometimes she silences my text , which is fine and understandable .

I will be having all the opinions on all the recent recs before the end of the season . I love this time of year for that .

I love looking them up on the Libby app and just seeing . It's really , it's a fun . It's a really really fun tool and you can you can look at , read magazines and all kinds of stuff . So highly , highly , highly recommend . Nothing to do with the topic of book bundling , but just worth a mention . So book bundling I . So book bundling .

So the history of book bundling book bundling was actually really brought into the foreground by , uh , the romance market , right ? So , um , romance authors were bundling their books and and and creating these .

You know two , three , four and sometimes up to like 10 books in a bundle , and so , just to be clear , right , we wanted to do the show about book bundling . If this is something that you've considered but you haven't really known where to go with it , hopefully the show will help you .

If you haven't done it and had never considered it and wondered why , how these books were showing up like this on Amazon , looking like there were multiple books on their retail page . Hopefully , this show will help to understand that and unpack this topic a little bit more .

Just , by definition is two or more books , typically from the same author , but we're going to explore that as well and they're put up on Amazon . They're always an e-book , even though I know that we have box sets of print books and whatnot .

That's not what we're talking about in this show and I I mean we have a number of authors , amy , don't we that have done book bundles and explored that as well .

You might decide to bundle book one and two as book four comes out . Right , there's a perceived value with book bundling . So when you have two books , which we'll get into pricing in a minute , but essentially like two books for the price of one , maybe , um , the perceived value is higher . It also is a great way to bring in new readers .

So one of the things that I like to talk about in when I you know , when I talk to authors is um , how are you , you know is , how are you , you know , how are you building new reader interest , right ? So if you have a lot of books out , how are you building new reader interest ?

And a lot of times you know they'll say well , I don't really have any new books coming out for another couple of years , whatever , consider maybe bundling two or three or more , depending on how many books that you have , you know , in an electronic format and putting that up on Amazon .

That is now a new product that you can market and promote and you know it can bring in new readers . And again , it's also fun Sometimes authors like change their book covers for or , you know , if you've wanted to revise your book cover .

I'm a huge fan of revising a book cover , especially if you feel like the first time you didn't really hit it out of the park . But a book bundle is also a great opportunity to come up with a new , um revised book cover .

We worked with an author , christina george , and her book bundle for book one and two in the publicist series actually has a cover that is radically different from the ones that she had when the books launched , because she wanted to get have a little bit more fun with it .

And again , you get to kind of start your marketing all over , like Penny said a lot of times . You know these are not new books , these are backlist titles . You know , like Penny mentioned , I love that idea of releasing a bundle in prep for the release of the next book in your series and let those play off of each other .

And this is just a great way to start fresh . And because we hear that a lot from authors , it's like well , I hate talking about myself or I just you know I'm not comfortable with self-promotion , but if you do a bundle , that's like talking about a brand new product and you shouldn't shy away from that . You know , I get it .

Sometimes it's hard to continue talking about your book two years later , like I've said it all , and now I just feel desperate . But the book bundle you get to treat it like a new book , which is very cool . And then the pricing options as well . Play around with your pricing . That is one thing I think that authors don't do enough of .

Just across the board , penny is testing . If you have full control over all the things , do some testing . You know , don't do knee-jerk testing , don't change things around every other month just because you didn't think you sold enough tight . You know what I mean . That like don't go nuts with it , but definitely do some testing .

You know , every quarter , try out some different price points . Things like that . And bundles are a great way to do that anyway , because , especially if they're for books that have not been moving very well lately anyway , either because of the age or you know what I mean there's a lot of factors that come into that .

You're able to get away with a lower price and then promote the hell out of that .

Bundle them together , promote them like crazy , do discount , like limited discount , promotions , things like that , and it's such a great way to feed a lot of new traffic to your page and to revive a lot of interest , and the price doesn't have to stay low forever , but it's just another great way to get people in your funnel and introduced to your series or your

work .

say , okay , we're going to create a book bundle of all of our books , or one each to one , or two each , whatever , and I've seen book bundles for books that are , you know , 15 to 20 books long , which is a lot actually . Um , but make sure that they compliment each other .

And part of the reason for that is is because you I mean , there's an argument that could be made that okay , well , so what if you have ?

So , let's say , you have a crime thriller and you have a cozy mystery , and you have , you know , amateur sleuth , and you have , you know , police procedural , and you put them all in a book bundle and there's all these different authors and you're all marketing the books and that's great and everybody's going to get exposure to more of your books .

But the problem is is that a lot of times , these readers don't cross over . So if you're doing this with other authors , make sure that you're aligning with people who have you know where you're going to be pulling in the same readers , because otherwise it doesn't really the benefit gets a little bit . You know , it's a little bit diluted in .

You know , in my opinion , if you are bundling your own books and you write across a bunch of different genres , the same rules apply , right , and I would say the same thing for nonfiction .

So typically , nonfiction authors I mean , I want to say typically , but there's always the exception , right , but a lot of times nonfiction authors write on one topic and they stay with that one topic . You know how to teach your kids something and the next thing you're writing about is , you know , yoga for seniors or whatever .

I mean those two are probably not going to go . You know , you're not going to want to bundle those . So just be , just be kind of mindful of that . Amy , do you want to talk about ? Do you want to do you want to kick us off with the different types of ? I know we have already sort of addressed that a little bit , but what do you want to dig into ?

The different types of book bundling ?

So you can start by just depending on how many books are in your series . You can start by bundling just book one and two . Down the road you could do books one through four when the series is complete .

I mean , there's a lot of different ways to go about this , so don't feel like you have to do it all , but I would say all at once and make that decision . But I would say , you know , for a lot of authors it's a lot depending on your background and what your sales are like today . Do you have a lot of return buyers , things like that ?

It's a lot simpler to get people on board , especially if you're relatively new or don't have a big following yet , with two books , versus saying , hey , invest the time and trust that you're going to love this , buy all four books at once . You know what I mean .

That gets a little trickier , I think personally , it's definitely one thing if you have some standalone titles that have done really well , have great reviews , things like that that could absolutely support somebody buying books one through four all at once , even if they haven't . You know what I mean .

That makes a little more sense when you have other titles on your bookshelf that show them like , okay , people like their work , like I'm just going to jump in because I love the concept of this , I love this genre , I'm going to do it . So that makes sense .

But I think if you're not , if you're getting your still getting your footing in this whole author space , diving right in and expecting people to buy books one through four , all in one bundle is probably going to be a big ask and you may not see a lot of movement on massive bundles like that unless you have other things to support them jumping in like that .

But another great option is connected standalones . So we've worked with a few clients recently Penny where this is a thing where the same character or group of characters , so all the stories work together but they're not reliant on reading them in order . So that's a really great option for bundling as well .

So same universe , same theme , same leading character , but it's not necessarily a chronological story of their life A lot of this . I love the ones with like groups of friends , you know .

And then you know , obviously short stories or novellas , similar to the connected standalones , combine those into something that people can jump into all at once . That's another very cool option . What's nice about that ? Short stories and novellas ? It gives people a taste for your work too .

If you promote it as get to know this , get to you know what I mean Like lean into the fact that it's a great easy gateway for people to get into your work and to understand your writing and , you know , to become fans and things like that . Really , take advantage of those opportunities for shorter reads . Because we've talked about a lot , typically books .

People don't you know they don't skip over buying a book because of the money . You know . Yes , we talk about pricing and pricing does matter , but at the end of the day , you really have to remember how much of somebody's time you're asking for when you're asking them to buy your book . That's a huge consideration to people .

Time is worth more than money for a lot of us nowadays . You know there just isn't enough hours in the day , so always keep that in the back of your head . When you're connecting with readers and trying to sell your books and when you're doing your marketing , is that you're asking people for a huge chunk of their life ?

Like , how do you make it sound worth it to them when that's the factor you know ?

In the majority of cases , you do not have to completely revamp your book interior unless you want to . So typically a good interior person will combine the various EPUB files into one file . So if you have books so if your books are in a series , a lot of times the interiors will look the same .

But if you have books that are not necessarily in a series , so a lot of times the interiors will look the same . But if you have books that are not necessarily in a series so a lot of this you know fiction or nonfiction a lot of the interiors will look different . You can keep that branding .

You're going to revise the cover to reflect the book bundle , but the interior is basically just . If you have the EPUBs , a solid interior person can just combine them into one book file that you then upload to Amazon . So that's just something to consider , because that's where this is a question that I get a lot .

They're like well , but do I have to have the book redesigned ? Do I have to get ? No , you do not . If you have those files , if they were given to you just , you literally just combine them , but they do have to be in one digital file , right ? So if you have multiple authors in this , you're going to have to have the conversation again .

Not to get too far down the rabbit hole , amy , but I just thought about this is you're going to have to have the conversation of okay , so who's managing that account ? Because the majority , like you , could every author , each author can put it onto their own account if you want , and then just leave it at that .

But if you have it on , if you're working with multiple authors and you want to just put it under one person's account for some reason I don't know why you would do that , but sometimes that happens Then one person is essentially managing that Amazon retail page , but you have to upload this .

You know you upload the book to KDP because I don't think that you can do multiple books in a bundle through , like Draft2Digital or IngramSpark . I could be wrong , but upload it to KDP , upload the cover and all that , and then you're , you know , you're , you're , you know , you're good to go .

I don't know if Amazon has placed limits on book sizes , like I know , I cited , you know , 15 books in a series . I don't know that they've necessarily put limits on book sizes because Amazon , as we've done , shows on . You know , we do shows on Amazon all the time .

Amazon changes everything every day , but , um , that it's a very , very basic , straightforward process . So then , in terms of nonfiction , topic-based collections , right . So if you have a whole bunch of books that you've done , I mean , I have bundled my own books , all books , every book that I write is on book marketing , although they're different topics .

Like , I had an internet marketing book which I don't re-release anymore just because it's so difficult to keep it updated because everything changes all the time with social media portals and whatnot . But I've bundled my own books and basically they fall under , you know , the topic-based collection . So , book marketing , right ?

So if you are listening to this and you're like , you know what , I should get together with a few of my nonfiction author , you know , friends , and maybe we could bundle our books and what ? Keep in mind that you want to make sure that they are , that they make sense . Much like what we talked about .

Much like what we talked about earlier , in that you don't want to lose readers , right ? You don't want to have a book on on , you know , teaching your kid how to play soccer or whatever , and then a book on yoga for seniors . It's not really . You're not going to get a lot of sales around that How-to guides , author brand bundles .

So , as I mentioned , I've bundled my books . If you have a lot of books , you're nonfiction , great . You can also do this seasonally , so I really like this idea . Actually , you can also do this seasonally , so I really like this idea .

Actually , themes and seasons , so a seasonal bundle of your books for you know whatever , whether it's you know a summer holiday , or you know the big holidays , or you know themes , right ? So fitness or cookbooks or whatever . I think that's a really , really cool idea , but that actually could apply to fiction or nonfiction , right ? Yeah , absolutely .

Do you see a lot of children's books that are bundled ? Because I really like the idea of bundling them , but I don't know that . I see that a lot .

Honestly , for me it depends on the kiddo , you know , yeah , some kids are just so used to being and I'm not knocking this on their tablets that they like reading books on their tablets . They know how to find it , like they know all the things .

I mean my kids can work any of my technology better than I can at this point , but then , just like adults , honestly , some kiddos just prefer to read and print too . So it's truly a child thing more than even a parent thing , I kind of want to say .

But I don't think it's a bad idea by any means and the process is relatively simple and it's an inexpensive way again to take up more space on your retail page to offer more to parents , and so and I think a lot of it too , penny , comes to how it's presented . You know we do a lot about retail page optimization .

I think being smart about how you present your children's book , why the bundle makes sense , you know what I mean . I think that's something that across the board . No matter what you're bundling , make sure to lean into why the bundle is a benefit .

I think account for that in your description , in all the author central feet , like different sections that are provided on author central . You know we talk about those a lot . You know . Really lean into why the bundle is such a great option , because it's important , you know .

Don't just throw it together and expect like people to figure out like , oh , I guess I could get two and it might be a little bit cheaper , but that's not very exciting . Like you need to tell people . Slap them in the face with why the bundle's a great idea , you know .

So for like a children's book I would totally lean into keep your kiddos busy on your next road trip or flight to visit grandma and grandpa , you know what I mean Stuff like that .

You know for why , who that market is , why they would do it , what the benefits are to them and lean into those and make it unique and separate from your titles individually . You know .

You can revive a brand , you can revive a series , you can do all kinds of really really fun things with it . But I think it also , like I said , it has to be . It has to be , it really has to be right .

So and you know , this is another thing too sometimes when authors say I have all these books out , I didn't really do it right the first time , what can I do now ? And my answer is you know , you can re-release the book , certainly , or you can leave the books as is and you can , just , you know , just you know , put together a book bundle right .

So I think that you know the benefits to book bundling . I think once you start to kind of , once you start to kind of navigate this road , the benefits to book bundling are huge . I mean , if you're doing it with other authors , then you all have exposure to your own audiences , which I love that idea , right ?

Yes , if you're doing it with books that are a little bit older , you're potentially bringing in new readers . You know book bundles seem like such a great deal , right , because you're getting two books for the price of one or three books for the price whatever . Um , and you know the pricing .

I mean I would say , if you're thinking like listening to the show , you're like , oh , I think I want to . You know , consider maybe doing a book bundle or something .

Take a look at other similar authors and see what they're , you know what they're charging for their , you know for their book bundle , right , and I think , just because it hasn't been done yet in your market , like this tends to lean heavier to fiction than it does to nonfiction .

But I think that if you are , you know there's no reason that you can't be first to market with a book bundle . I mean , when I was , when I did the book bundle of my books , they're really there .

There still aren't a lot of book marketing , books that you know they're , that are being bundled , and I absolutely plan like I will release the workbook separately and then after a time I am 10,000% going to bundle it with the original book because it is a bundle . I mean you , you , you , you know what I mean .

So I think that , being strategic about this and thinking , you know , I have this series planned and I think it just it's a really , really great way to get to build , you know , build more readers . To get to build , you know , build more readers . And it's a great way of of , you know , starting over .

If you came to us from the backlist show by the way we've talked about , I know we mentioned that we did a show on this and to go back and look for it , this is such a fabulous way to revive a backlist .

Yeah , Building a bundle and throwing it up on Amazon is not going to revive your backlist , you know .

You know your plans for marketing it , your limited time , discounts , all the things and like totally embrace that you get to have a do over , essentially , and really have it planned out and be smart about it , because that's when these work for you .

You know , it's not the creating it that fixes problems , it's the fact that you get to do things differently or better the next time around . That's what helps fix problems , revives your brand , finds new readers , things like that .

If you think , oh my gosh , I'd love to do a holiday bundle , you have plenty of time now , right , provided obviously that the books are written and they're already up on Amazon , otherwise maybe 2026 .

Um , but it's also , you know , there was a time when book bundling like everybody was bundling and you could not go to a single fiction conference I don't care what genre it was and not hear like 10 people in line waiting for your morning breakfast or something , talk about their book bundle . It's faded a bit .

So , you know , like things kind of come and go a little bit , the appeal of book bundling has not faded .

The appeal of book bundling has not faded , but the fact that there were so many people jumping on the bandwagon has , which I actually kind of like , because at that time , like you , would look at a list , a genre on , you know , genre fiction , mystery , romance , whatever on science fiction didn't matter on Amazon , and every single book that you saw on that list

was bundled . It was a book bundle , so there wasn't anything real . I mean , it's great again for all the reasons that we mentioned , but there wasn't anything really unique about it . No , you don't see it as I mean , amy , you do a lot of .

You're on Amazon a lot , almost probably more than Jeff Bezos is , although he's probably he's probably busy tuning up his rocket to go to space , but I know , or working out .

I think a lot of when the book bundling was that huge surge , also kind of aligned with the fact that so many of them were so freaking cheap . You know , yeah , I don't love that . People are like , ooh , I'm going to get four books for 99 cents and now I'm winning . It's like leaving money on the table .

But the way we've talked about before , yeah , sometimes it can push a lot of immediate you could see a surge in sales , but a lot of times those people like we've talked about before don't end up reading them because their Kindles just get full of all the things and they weren't actually fully invested in making that buying decision .

It was more about the 99 cents than it was about what they were buying , yeah , and so they weren't making that like those longer term connections with readers that were purchasing that really end up serving you long term . So I agree with you . I think I love the fact that it's not . It's kind of become much more strategic and you don't just see it everywhere .

It's actually something that can be treated as something special again .

I don't really know , but we love this idea . We hope that the show has been helpful and we love reader feedback . We love reviews . Wherever you listen to podcasts , if this is your first time , finding us welcome to our universe , we love .

The podcast actually has become , I would say , for both Amy and myself , one of the favorite things that we do when it comes to doing our , you know , business promotion . And , let's face it , the podcast is a promotional tool .

I talk to a lot of authors who heard our podcast first and then decided they want to do a call and we , we really love doing it right .

It continues to be great to us , but it's it's a lot easier to reach people about timely topics and about things that are happening in the industry right now through the podcast than it is through the blog .

I didn't know that , I found that out . But also , you will get our shows every Friday in your feed and again , if you're struggling with something like , what are you really challenged with ? We really want to know , because these show ideas come from y'all .

So we definitely want to make sure that this podcast is dedicated to teaching , and all the reasons that we're in business is the mission to help authors be successful . What's really interesting about this is that in the five years that we've done this show , so many podcasts on book marketing have come and gone .

And you know and I get it , because podcasts are not you podcasting is kind of like a blog , like I remember years ago , when I was first in business , everybody was like , oh , you have to have a blog , you have to have a blog , and people dived headfirst into it and then realized that a blog takes a lot of work and anything that you're doing long term

takes a lot of work . The issue with the podcast is that it never really feels like work , because we're hearing your ideas , we're getting ideas , we're incorporating them into show .

We have a lot of fun recording this , and so we did this for you guys and and we welcome we always , we always welcome your input , but not that we're the last show in book marketing , but we're going to stay around long enough that we are . So there you go , and thank you , by the way , for the recent review that we got on the Kindle show .

We really , really , really appreciate that . We will see you next Friday . We wish you all a great week and thank you for listening , bye-bye .