Announcing Bundles, a huge Leanpub feature focused on selling, not writing

61 views
Skip to first unread message

Peter Armstrong

unread,
May 14, 2012, 4:56:14 PM5/14/12
to lea...@googlegroups.com
Hi all,

Today we're launching a big new Leanpub feature: Bundles.

Example: http://leanpub.com/b/node

You can now sell bundles of your own books and (with permission) other
authors' books. Readers love buying bundles, and we think this will
help drive a lot of sales of your books.

We've already sold a couple thousand copies of a bundle in a test on a
separate website, and we've realized that instead of being a separate
website this needs to become a core Leanpub feature. Here's why this
feature exists, and how it works...


== Why Bundles? ==

While most of the work we do is focused on improving the experience of
writing a Leanpub book, we also are focused on improving the
experience of selling a Leanpub book. The variable price and dual
price + royalty slider feature was a good start, and we've also done a
site redesign to make your book pages more attractive. This next
feature is, we think, bigger than both of these combined.

Bundles lets you sell your books and other authors' books (with their
permission, of course) together as a bundle. Buyers of the bundle pay
one price and get all the books in the bundle. (These purchases are
no different than normal Leanpub purchases: they are entitled to all
the updates, etc.)

Readers love buying bundles. We have tested the concept by selling a
bundle of two Leanpub books, The Node Beginner Book and Hands-on
Node.js, on http://leanbundle.com. It currently has 2097 sales, most
at its previous $7.99 price, but some at its new $14.99 price. (We've
found that these two prices are about equivalent in terms of revenue
for the authors.)

If you're the author of multiple Leanpub books, this is a no-brainer:
create a bundle of all your books together. But even if you're "only"
writing one Leanpub book, you can still create and sell bundles. Just
propose a royalty split that is fair, so the other authors accept!


== How it Works ==

There's now a "Your Bundles" tab on your Dashboard
(http://leanpub.com/dashboard). On this page you can create a new
bundle. Once you've created the bundle, you can add books to the
bundle. You add multiple books to it, and you set the percentage of
the bundle royalties that each book gets.

The royalties work like a normal Leanpub book purchase: The bundle has
a minimum and suggested price. The bundle gets a 90% - 50 cents
royalty. This royalty is then split among the books in the bundle
according to the percentages you set. (These percentages add up to
100%, since they are the percentage of the royalties not the revenue.)

Once you've added all the books you want into the bundle and the
percentages add up to 100%, you will see a Propose Bundle button at
the bottom of your bundle page. If you click this, your bundle is
proposed. Any books where you are the author get automatically
accepted. For the other books, we email the primary author to let
them know about the proposed bundle, and we put the bundle invitation
in the Pending Invitations tab (http://leanpub.com/dashboard#pending)
of the author's Dashboard. Each author (besides you) with an included
book can accept or reject the proposal. (The minimum price and
royalty percentage are both told to the authors, so they know the
minimum amount that they will make on a sale of the bundle. So make
sure this amount is compelling.) Also, you may want to reach out to
the other authors via email or Twitter first, before proposing the
bundle!

If all authors accept the bundle proposal, the bundle is published,
and is for sale on an attractive bundle landing page at
http://leanpub.com/b/yourbundle. (If the bundle only contains your
books, these all auto-accept the bundle so your bundle is published
right away.)

If any author rejects the bundle proposal, the bundle is rejected.
You can't re-propose bundles; instead, just delete it and make another
bundle.

For discoverability, if your book is in one or more bundles, these
bundles are now shown in a "Bundles Available" sidebar of your book
landing page. You can buy the bundles directly from that sidebar, or
you can click on the bundle names to go to the bundle landing pages to
learn more. For an example of this sidebar, see the
http://leanpub.com/nodebeginner book page.


== Feedback Please! ==

Anyway, we think this feature will work well for lots of you. (This
is especially true for you agile authors: your books would make great
bundles!) Please let us know any and all feedback you have, and let
us know if you hit any issues with the workflow etc.

Thanks!
Peter and Scott

P.S. If Scott wrote this email it would be 1/3 as long. Sorry!

P.P.S. Once we're done migrating the Node.js bundle to Leanpub, the
leanbundle.com site will have served its purpose. So we'll be
redirecting it to http://leanpub.com/b/node when that happens.

--
Peter Armstrong  (@peterarmstrong)
Founder: Leanpub, Ruboss  |  Author: Lean Publishing, Flexible Rails, etc.

Yves Hanoulle

unread,
May 14, 2012, 5:40:57 PM5/14/12
to lea...@googlegroups.com
Hi Peter,

Great. I love it.

I 'm thinking about offering Who is agile with all translations in a bundle...
.
I do have a question.
How does it show in the sales, do you see that a sale was done over a bundle?
do you see that on a separate page?

Yves

2012/5/14 Peter Armstrong <pe...@ruboss.com>

Peter Armstrong

unread,
May 14, 2012, 6:31:23 PM5/14/12
to lea...@googlegroups.com
Right now you see every individual sale and the royalty that results
from the bundle purchase just mixed in on the book sales page. (We
create a purchase for every book in the bundle.)

We may add a separate bundle purchase page, or at the very least show
the bundle that was used on the book sales page (just like we show the
coupon code that was used).

Regarding translations, my thinking is that bundles of translations
should be as close to the individual price as possible, or identical.
(Most people only read one language, and don't need a bundle.)

The idea for the bundle feature is that we have a lot of related
books, and we expect this trend to continue. For example, my guess is
that an Agile bundle with your book, Laurent's and Elisabeth's could
sell nicely. There's also Jamie's book, the Kanban books, etc. Also,
Reg making a raganwald bundle out of his 4 books would work, etc...

Thanks
Peter

Yves Hanoulle

unread,
May 14, 2012, 6:47:24 PM5/14/12
to lea...@googlegroups.com
(Most people only read one language, and don't need a bundle.)
 I disagree here.

I would love to read agile books in Dutch, which would read faster, but still prefer to have the original language, to be sure I understand the   places were the translations don't help me.

If I have to choose, I would buy an agile book in English and not Dutch. 
buying it together, would give me the choice for either...

anyway, too early for us for the translations...


Peter Armstrong

unread,
May 14, 2012, 6:51:26 PM5/14/12
to lea...@googlegroups.com
>> (Most people only read one language, and don't need a bundle.)
>
>  I disagree here.

I wrote too hastily:

I meant that even for people who read multiple languages (you
Europeans, for example :), that most people would only read a given
book in one language even if they had multiple language versions.

(Wow, this is an instance of me initially not being verbose enough!)

Anyway, your point is a good counter to that, and is well taken. But
I just want to clarify my original point, so I don't sound like a
"wait, there are other languages than English, lol" type of person :)

Thanks!
Peter

Yves Hanoulle

unread,
May 14, 2012, 7:02:34 PM5/14/12
to lea...@googlegroups.com
2012/5/15 Peter Armstrong <pe...@ruboss.com>
I got that, but I would say that what most English people (or anyone who only knows one language) think is that other people have a prefered language. and in my experience peopel that do speak different languages, want to use different languages for diffferent purposes...

F ex, with an OS, I have to select the ONE language in which I want to work.

When I did software support 15 years ago,I preferred an option that would allow me to change the language of my windows OS, depending on the customer I had online. (so I did not have to find the correct translation for the menu items...

As far as I know, windows still does not offer me that choice, although most phones do now these days...

Another example: I might prefer a website to be in English (as I am used to navigate on English websites), but if the article is available in Dutch I prefer to read in Dutch....

Richard Veryard

unread,
May 15, 2012, 5:28:52 AM5/15/12
to leanpub
Just another point about language. The translation of technical
documentation often introduces delay, error and confusion. I've worked
with people who preferred to read documentation in their own language
when this was available, but would make the extra effort to read it in
English to check some critical detail, or when the translation didn't
make sense.

Obviously it helps if the section numbering (and maybe even page
numbering) is identical between the different languages.

R

Yves Hanoulle

unread,
May 15, 2012, 5:51:36 AM5/15/12
to lea...@googlegroups.com
Scrambled by my Yphone

Op 15-mei-2012 om 10:28 heeft Richard Veryard <goo...@veryard.com> het
volgende geschreven:

> Just another point about language. The translation of technical
> documentation often introduces delay, error and confusion. I've worked
> with people who preferred to read documentation in their own language
> when this was available, but would make the extra effort to read it in
> English to check some critical detail, or when the translation didn't
> make sense.
This is Why I Would sell à bundle per language...

Which brings up the question, can I create a bundle with a not yet
published book.

Y

>
> Obviously it helps if the section numbering (and maybe even page
> numbering) is identical between the different languages.
>
Woow, love that.

> R
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages