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Further Proof that Content Bundles are the New Groupon

006-Bundle-Melissa-Foster[1]A couple months back I predicted that everyone would soon take up content bundles as the hot new way to sell more stuff, and as we can see from today’s news I was not far off.

Ganxy, a third-party service companies that helps authors and publishers to independently sell ebooks, announced today on their blog that their partners can now sell content bundles as well as individual titles.

Authors and publishers can build a bundle out of titles already sold through this New York based startup, or if they like they can upload new ebooks and build a bundle from scratch. The seller can write a new description for the bundle and then put it out for sale.

Customers who buy the bundle will be able to download the individual titles in Epub, Kindle, or PDF.  This makes the Ganxy bundles similar in some respects to Baen’s monthly bundles (the ones which might be ending soon).

Update: It turns out that Baen will be keeping their monthly bundles, a detail which was not clear at the time the news came out.  The announcement has since been clarified and the bundles will not be going away – though older bundles are no longer available.

It is not yet possible to sell bundles in the major ebookstores like the Kindle or Nook Stores, where you cannot even put 2 ebooks in your cart at once much less pay a single price for a bundle. But there are any number of startups offering ebook bundles, including Humble Bundle, StoryBundle, and others.

But given how popular the idea seems to be, I would not be surprised if Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble made the option available some time in the next few months.

This would be a good thing for all, because it seems that Amazon won’t allow bundles to be sold elsewhere if the ebooks in the bundles are also sold in the Kindle Store. I might be wrong on that point, though.

 

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Comments


Mike Cane December 13, 2012 um 11:33 am

>>>It is not yet possible to sell bundles in the major ebookstores like the Kindle or Nook Stores

You might be wrong. I’ve gotten "boxed sets" of FREE books from the Kindle Store. Makes me wonder if it’s all one file with an overall ToC. I haven’t downloaded any of them to try yet due to the extreme crappiness of the Windows Kindle software.

Nate Hoffelder December 13, 2012 um 11:37 am

Point me at one and I will check.

The thing about bundles in the Kindle Store is that if Baen had been able to offer bundles they would do so.

Nate Hoffelder December 13, 2012 um 11:45 am

The ebook bundles and boxed sets which I have found are all omnibus editions in a single file, not actual bundles.

Mike Cane December 13, 2012 um 8:27 pm

So that explains it.


Robert Nagle December 13, 2012 um 12:44 pm

Let me explain one important detail. To sell on Amazon, you have to guarantee that it can always match or beat competitor’s prices. That’s a reason why selling bundles elsewhere are so attractive. You can discount products in a bundle without causing Amazon to match the price of individual items.

This would be less of an issue if Amazon and BN allowed publishers and authors to have promotional discount codes (Smashwords has been way ahead of the game on that).

Nate Hoffelder December 13, 2012 um 1:02 pm

Then why is Baen giving up on the bundles? I had thought that Amazon had been difficult about the issue.

Edit: It looks like I was wrong. The announcement has since been clarified and the bundles will not be going away.


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