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.