.
1 - 7 of 7 Posts
Joined
·
5,292 Posts
I say options 2 and 3, with both the smaller collections in option 3 distributed as widely as possible. I'd price the overall collection at 5.99 and the two smaller ones at 3.99. There is no rule that you can't have the same stories in multiple collections as long as you are clear in the description about what is included. Why not offer the full range of products to hit a broader range of readers?
Joined
·
2,307 Posts
Just be very clear that the big omnibus is a collection of the other two collections and you should be fine.Doomed Muse said:
G
Guest
·I don't know if I count as one of the smart morning folks, but here goes...
I personally am not a fan of Select. But I have a marketing plan that requires widespread distribution. I don't restrict my marketing to just the "Kindle freebie" sites. I have a multi-faceted marketing approach that encompasses both digital and print. I have a pre-existing readership tha is not on the Kindle (last year, I didn't release a title in PDF format and got yelled at by fans who still only read PDFs). I do a lot of offline marketing through book fairs and conventions. I have international readers who can't shop on Amazon or won't because of delivery fees.
So it depends on how you plan to market. Some folks do very well with Select and swear by it. But all of their marketing essentially drives traffic to Amazon. And if you are depending on Amazon traffic for 100% of your sales, you are at the mercy of Amazon's algorithms. Things that worked three months ago no longer work because of changes. Things that work today may not work in two weeks if Amazon changes something else.
On the subject of how to group the stories, it depends on how firmly the stories are planted in their genres. If the sci-fi stories are "hard" science fiction, I would say split it off from the horror. While there is a lot of crossover between the speculative genres, people looking for hard sci fi tend to want hard sci fi and may be annoyed to buy something and half the book is horror with no sci-fi elements at all. If it is soft sci fi, you can put them all together but order the stories in a way that they compliment each other. Compiling a collection is an artform in and of itself. You want each story to compliment the one that comes before it and the one after. I wouldn't make the first half all one and the second half all the other. Look for common themes between the stories and place them together in a way that flows nicely.
I personally am not a fan of Select. But I have a marketing plan that requires widespread distribution. I don't restrict my marketing to just the "Kindle freebie" sites. I have a multi-faceted marketing approach that encompasses both digital and print. I have a pre-existing readership tha is not on the Kindle (last year, I didn't release a title in PDF format and got yelled at by fans who still only read PDFs). I do a lot of offline marketing through book fairs and conventions. I have international readers who can't shop on Amazon or won't because of delivery fees.
So it depends on how you plan to market. Some folks do very well with Select and swear by it. But all of their marketing essentially drives traffic to Amazon. And if you are depending on Amazon traffic for 100% of your sales, you are at the mercy of Amazon's algorithms. Things that worked three months ago no longer work because of changes. Things that work today may not work in two weeks if Amazon changes something else.
On the subject of how to group the stories, it depends on how firmly the stories are planted in their genres. If the sci-fi stories are "hard" science fiction, I would say split it off from the horror. While there is a lot of crossover between the speculative genres, people looking for hard sci fi tend to want hard sci fi and may be annoyed to buy something and half the book is horror with no sci-fi elements at all. If it is soft sci fi, you can put them all together but order the stories in a way that they compliment each other. Compiling a collection is an artform in and of itself. You want each story to compliment the one that comes before it and the one after. I wouldn't make the first half all one and the second half all the other. Look for common themes between the stories and place them together in a way that flows nicely.
1 - 7 of 7 Posts
