The self-publishing community is often recognized and celebrated as being collaborative—and innovative in the process. Authors share knowledge and resources, and they band together to increase their visibility and reach.
Multi-author box sets or bundles have been one popular method of collaboration. We recall becoming keenly aware of this phenomenon in 2014, when twelve indie authors bundled one novel each into a single, low-priced set called Deadly Dozen and hit the New York Times bestseller list.
But there have been some repercussions to this bundling activity, including strict enforcement by Amazon of the conditions for sale: for multi-author bundles made available in Kindle Unlimited, the books must be exclusively offered in that set and not be for sale or available elsewhere (as long as that set is available), even during pre-order.
However, it doesn’t appear that money to be made from single author or multi-author box sets has tapered off or that reader enthusiasm for them has waned. In fact, just this week, indie author Joanna Penn stated that 51 percent of her fiction book sales income for the last year came from box sets, and they constituted 77 percent of her Kobo fiction sales income. Services that focus on bundle sales and marketing, such as Story Bundle and Humble Bundle, remain popular.
Like any area that presents a money-making or bestseller opportunity, some controversial and less-than-ethical behavior has surfaced. In short, what sometimes happens is that authors organize box sets, then pool money to buy and gift their own box sets in order to gain bestseller status. We’ve recently been following the discussion around and increased visibility of the anonymous site Inside Indie, which has published case studies on box-set gigs, rank manipulation, and related “bullying” behavior. (While the site bills itself as a “humorous evaluation of the publishing world,” we would consider it more pointed and critical than humorous. It is also heavily slanted toward calling out one particular box-set organizer. As you would with anything that’s anonymous, bring your skepticism with you.) It’s clear there’s been gaming of the system—which has been well-known and recognized in indie circles for years, and perhaps less well-known outside of it.
Bottom line: We don’t expect that Inside Indie or any other form of public shaming will slow down authors (or bundle organizers) who continue to see a benefit from bundling and marketing their work together. The strategy remains sound, if the tactics sometimes used to promote such products have become questionable. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Amazon put even more rules or restrictions in place to help eradicate some of the grosser manipulations of the system.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
