As I have written about in the past, bundles are one of the best ways to make money on Amazon.
A lot of you have emailed me about bundling your books on Amazon so I figured I’d write up a post about it.
This is just going to be a quick post on the best practices of bundling erotic stories on Amazon.
So, let’s dive right into this money making topic!
1. Backmatter Still Matters
A lot of people don’t think backmatter matters when it comes to your bundles.
I have to disagree.
In fact, backmatter is SUPER important even if you’re bundling your books together!
Now your backmatter strategy will change a little bit.
Instead of including single stories in your backmatter, include OTHER bundles that you have.
Most buyers of bundled books are looking for discounts on books. So they’re not interested in individual books.
As a result, if you link your other bundled works in your backmatter, you’ll see high conversion rates.
I used to include single stories, but now I link bundled works in all of my bundled works.
And I have to say, the increase in income is pretty substantial!
Give it a try and see if it works for you.
2. How Many Books?
In general, I have found that larger bundle books sell better than smaller bundles (5 or less stories).
As a rule of thumb, I would say 5+ books at a minimum for bundles.
This way, you can offer the books at a decent discount (but nothing too steep).
At the same time, you don’t want to bundle your entire catalog for obvious reasons. Otherwise, they could just buy all of your books with one purchase!
I would bundle enough books so you can price them for $5.99+ (even at a discount).
Just based on my experience, this price (and book) range does the best.
3. Don’t Over-Bundle
Bundling is a great way to make money with your old content. But at the same time, you don’t want to over-bundle your books.
If you keep doing that, customers WILL notice – they aren’t stupid!
Some disgruntled customers may even report your to Amazon.
There’s nothing worse than buying a bundled book and to figure out you already purchased some of those stories!
Depending on how big your catalog is, I would say don’t bundle the same book more than three times.
There are limits to all great things after all!
In fact…bundling too much isn’t good (speaking from personal experience here) for sales.
4. Release Dates
This is something I’ve often experimented around with mixed results.
But, there are two schools of thoughts when it comes to releasing bundles.
One group thinks that you should release bundles as soon as you have enough books.
Let’s say you want to bundle 10 books. As soon as you have 10 books published, bundle them right away.
The other group thinks you should wait (several months) and then bundle those old books that aren’t selling much anymore.
The line of thinking is you want to limit cannibalization of your sales from the bundles as much as possible.
In my experience, it really doesn’t have much of an impact.
I’ve tried both releasing bundles as soon as I could and also waiting a few months.
The difference in sales wasn’t too big.
5. Individual Stories vs. Series
Another thing to consider when it comes to bundling is which stories to include in the book.
Should you bundle individual stories or books in the same series?
While I don’t write a lot of series when it comes to erotica, I do occasionally.
And I have found that a bundled series does do slightly better than a collection of random stories – but not by that much.
If you are bundling individual stories, be sure to make sure they are in the same niche.
As an example, you don’t want to bundle gay and straight stories in the same book. The audience is obviously different.
One thing some authors like to do is bundle stories from different pen names (that they own) together.
This can work, but again, make sure the stories are somewhat related when it comes to the target audience.
Bundling Erotic Stories on Amazon: Final Thoughts
Overall, bundling is a great way to increase your erotica sales.
If you follow these five general rules, your bundle should be able to make you a decent chunk of change.
Bundles are some of my best selling books of all time, so I know a thing or two about them.
What about you? Do you have any best practices you think should be on this list?
Let me know in the comments!