Be Boxset Clever

Have you ever considered bringing out a boxed set?

If you are writing a series of books, and have more than three titles out, it's worth considering bringing out a boxed set. Even if you're not a series writer but your books are similar – perhaps they're all set in a specific time period, or the subject matter is compatible – it's worth considering publishing a compilation.

New Readership

Boxed sets are very popular amongst avid readers – so-called whale readers, which means you can find a completely new readership with boxed sets. Those readers will then hopefully go on the read your other books, and even sign up for your mailing list. Especially if you add your free book or story, or another reader magnet offer, to the back of the boxed set.

Higher Priced Product with Little Effort

Publishing a boxed set allows you to publish a higher-value product with very little effort. Especially if you can format your books yourself by using Vellum or similar software, producing a compilation boxed set of your books is incredibly easy and quick.

Even though the effort to produce a boxed set is much less than writing a whole new book, you can charge a higher price for your boxed set and still give good value to a reader.

My boxed sets (below) are just $6.99 each for three novels. If the reader wanted to buy all the books included in the compilation separately, they would cost around $10. This means that by buying the boxed set the reader gets 30-45% off the price. And who doesn't like a bargain?

Mega Boxed Set

You can go even further than just having a couple of boxed sets for your fiction (or nonfiction) series. You can compile all the books in the series, including a prequel or other extras into one mega-boxed set. I am considering doing this with both of my series. 

For the series above, Love on the Island, I am planning to bring out a six-book boxed set. This choice is fairly simple. It'll just be for eBook readers, those lucrative whale ones.

With my first series, The Nordic Heart, the decision of whether to bring out a compilation of all the books in the series is a little trickier. There's already one boxed set out that includes four of the six books in the series. This is my best-selling title in the series, which is encouraging.

In addition to the novels in this boxed set, there is a prequel novella, The Young Heart, which in the past, I have used as a reader magnet to get subscribers to my mailing list. Now that I have a second series out, I rarely even advertise the prequel.

There's also a sixth book, The Christmas Heart, which is set a little later in time and features only one of the characters in the series. I always felt that this last book was so different from the rest of the series that I couldn't include it in the boxed set. Besides, The Nordic Heart Books 1-4 was already out by the time I published The Christmas Heart. Now, however, I think it's a good idea to publish all the books together. 

So, as you can see, even though I already have boxed sets out for books in both of my two series, there is still scope to create more products.

Over to You

I hope I've encouraged you to create boxed sets out of the books you already have published! It’s a great way to increase your product range with very little effort.

Let me know in comments below if you are already boxset clever, or are about publish a compilation.