One of the tried-and-true ways to move retail goods is to give a “2 for 1” or a “Buy 1 get 1 free” deal. People can’t resist a bargain, and the same strategy can work for your ebooks. This ploy in self-publishing is known as bundling.

As online booksellers such as Amazon.com don’t allow you to choose which individual titles to bundle into a sale (though Amazon.com will do so of its own volition), you have to do a work around. That’s easy enough with just a little extra effort on your part.

First, decide which books to bundle together. For example, if you’ve penned books about the craft of writing, you might combine your titles on plot, setting and character into one package. The idea is that the books in the bundle make sense when combined. Copy and paste those formatted ebooks into a single document.

Next, you’ll need to create some new material. First, you’ll need a new cover (one just for an ebook), a new half-title page, a new title page, and a table of contents that links to the start of each book in the bundle.

The cover should state that this is a bundle of books and perhaps even list those titles. The photo/illustration might be of those books’ covers, but usually a new image that ties all of the titles together is best.

You’ll also need a new description that states you’re selling a bundle and gives a summary of the titles included within it. This description is posted on the webpage selling your bundled title.

For the marketing ploy to work, the bundle must be less expensive than the price of the three books if they were purchased separately. So if each title is $1 – or $3 total – then the price of the bundled book should be about a third less, or $2.

Of course, you then will need to promote that this book is available. But you stand to gain more sales for less effort if you promote a bundled book rather than three separate titles.

Bundled ebooks mark a good way to stoke a resurgence in sales for your older titles. And if you have a new book coming out, the bundled collection is a great method of generating interest in you as an author and your upcoming title (be sure to include a page in your bundled book about the new title coming out!).

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.