Hit The Take-Off Button For Your Box Set

You would think that a box set of 9 full length sci-fi novels, each story 80k+ words in length, priced at £9.99 ($9.99 if you are in the USA) would be flying off the shelf.
 
But it wasn’t. We were wondering why, so we got the team together in Selfishgenie House (a Zoom call made from my living room, to be truthful) and had a bit of a brainstorming session on the subject.
 
Along the way we started to discuss the psychology of purchasing and how it might be working against us.
 
The box set is priced at £9.99, which we think is a bargain. But for the reader that may not appear so.
 
Perhaps they are thinking “If I read the first story and don’t like it, I’ve wasted 8/9ths of my £9.99”.

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Why would they think that?
 
Because, at some point, they have bought a box set and that has happened to them, so they don’t want to risk doing it again.
 
We know that books at much lower prices than the box set don’t sell because readers don’t want to take a risk on an author that isn’t well known. So the possibility must exist  that people don’t want to risk their money paying more for a box set they may not like.
 
The author of The Magi series is quite well known and has a strong following for a different series. The problem is that the other series isn’t sci-fi, so most sci-fi readers probably don’t know about him and his books.
 
So, as problem solvers, what could we do about this barrier to sales for a box set that should be flying off the shelves but isn’t?

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We knew that Kindle Countdown deals had worked for the author’s other series. We had sold the first book of the series at 99p and then got lots of follow-on sales for the rest of the series at the normal price. Would that also work for the sci-fi box set?
 
We decided that maybe we should put book 1 of the sci-fi series on a Kindle Countdown deal for 99p (99c USA) and then promote the hell out of it.
 
But then one of our team pointed out that wouldn’t work unless the reader also knew that they could get the box set for a bargain price.
 
So, how could we get that message across?
 
If we tried to make it part of the advertising copy, it would be far too cumbersome, something along the lines of “Get a sci-fi book for 99p and then, if you like it, buy the whole series for £9.99.”
 
It hardly rolls off the tongue, does it?

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But there was something we could do. We could strike while the iron is hot.
 
If someone has just read a book they liked, then the time to sell them the next book in the series is right then, immediately after they have read the words “The End”, because they are probably wanting more of the same. So, it should also work if we do the same thing for the box set.
 
Which is what we decided to do.
 
We edited the manuscript for the ebook of the first book in the series and added this bit immediately after the “The End”.

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“An  Kohli* says, “If you have enjoyed ‘The Magi’, the first book in the Magi series, you can read books 2 to 9 for the bargain price of $9.99 (USA) or £9.99 (UK) with
‘The Magi Box Set’.”
 
Find out more here.”

* An Kohli is the name of the main character in the book.

​We then uploaded the new manuscript to KDP, set the dates for the Kindle Countdown deal and waited to see what happened.
 
Did it work?
 
We are delighted to say that it did.

The 99p book flew off the shelf, though we did pay quite a lot for advertising over the period of the Kindle Countdown deal.
 
But then the box set started to sell as readers bought into the whole series. That was enough to pay back the advertising costs and then reap the rewards.
 
But that wasn’t all. We started to get KENP reads for the box set too, off the back of the same advertising campaign. OK, we don’t earn as much from KENP reads, but money is money!
 
Would the same tactic work for your series box set?
 
We see no reason why not.

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​Authors are often reluctant to discount their books because they see it as devaluing their brand. Fair enough. If that’s the way you think, then it’s your privilege – but how are your sales looking from on top of your high horse?
 
Some authors have a better reason for not discounting their books, which is that if someone buys the book at the cheaper price, they aren’t going to buy another copy at full price. 

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But this approach is different, because it uses a sprat to catch a mackerel as we say over here (or my mother used to say, to be more accurate).
 
Even if you haven’t got a box set to sell, but do have more books in the series, the same principle works, though you do have to sell more individual books to recoup your advertising costs.
 
There are other factors that come into play when using this approach.
 
First of all, the surge in 99p sales pushes your book up the Amazon sales rankings. “The Magi” jumped from around 500,000 in the Amazon rankings to 18,000 literally overnight. Its category rankings were even better, at 117, 129 and 196.

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Many readers only buy books that other people are reading, so the book appearing to be popular, by being well up the sales rankings, is a definite selling point.
 
The book also starts to appear in a very important list on Amazon, the "also bought" list:
 
 “People who bought (insert title of another author’s book) also bought (insert title of your book)”.
 
That list (usually shown in a carousel format) influences some readers, again because they like to read what other people are reading. They feel reassured by other people’s reading choices.
 
And, finally, even though the book only cost the reader 99p, some of them will still review it, so you can gain a few extra reviews for your book which should, if it’s a good review, encourage more people to buy, probably at full price if the Kindle Countdown deal has ended.

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And you can do the same thing every 3 months, because that is how often you can run Kindle Countdown deals.
 
Paying for advertising for a book that only costs 99p appears to be a taking a big chance and we would agree that there is a risk there.

​But with risk comes reward. People who never take risks never achieve anything and that includes not achieving best-seller status.
 
We can’t promise you that your series or box set will start to fly off the shelf. All we can tell you is that after taking this approach, we had a considerable increase in the sale of our box set.
 
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