I wonder if there’s a boxed set?

My current Achilles heel with respect to buying books is asking myself,  ‘I wonder if there’s a boxed set?’

It makes sense to me. Why would I buy just one book if I can get three with a discount? Or more! *squees*

Sure, it’s a risk if it’s a ‘new to me’ author. What if I don’t like the first book? What if I hate the author’s writing style? But I can read a sample on Amazon. I can check the Goodreads reviews from my friends and people whose opinion I respect. Sometimes I disagree with them, but it’s rare.

So let’s call buying a boxed set a calculated risk. With audio books it’s a super bonus to use my monthly credit to buy more than one book that counts, to Audible, as one credit.

What I don’t get is why traditional publishers seem to have no clue how to market titles in the ebook trade. Seriously, this IS their day job.

Over and over, I see rookie mistakes. They publish a sample with an ISBN number and a separate listing- the whole shebang - when anyone who actually uses Amazon, Kobo et al at any depth knows that you can open it and have a look inside on the sale page, or you download a sample of the full book to your reading device and read it, or hear a sample for the audiobook.

Making a separate version is unnecessary. It duplicates listings, confuses readers, clogs up sites like Goodreads, and makes more work for everyone without adding any value. Doing it this way makes it look like a short independent work by that author.

But for me, it makes me annoyed. I get what I think is a short story only to read it and find out it’s actually a sample of a longer work. Do you think I’m going to give it five stars in my review?

Nope. It isn’t written like a short work. It doesn’t have a beginning, a middle, and an end so it’s an unappetising read. Angry me doesn’t buy the whole book.

But, back to boxed sets. Why the heck would a publisher box together three works in the same series and then have the price almost exactly the same as if I had purchased them separately?

I get that you can download them in one file. See also, the price of ebooks in Australia… sighs. $13 for an ebook times three is $39. So a HUGE saving of $1.01 to buy all three.

For that price I can buy the paperback on bookdepository and get it posted from the UK to Australia for free. Sure, I’ll have to wait a few days but I can do math, why can’t the publishers?

How dare you suggest that cheaper boxed sets would just mean more books for me! *grins*