How to Make a Boxed-Set

How to Make a Boxed-Set

Once you have published three or more books within a series, you may be fantasizing about creating a
"boxed-set" of your books -- which is perfect for gifts, marketing, and further establishing your "cred" as
a professionally published author. Nothing is quite as "cool" as selling boxed-sets of your books from
your own author website or from Amazon.
Unlike the convenience factor you experience with the zero-inventory "print-on-demand" aspects of
your physical Outskirts Press books, "boxed-set books" are inventory-driven physical products, and as
such, they demand a different mentality, and higher level of personal involvement.
For instance, you must define the dimensions of the box itself, which depends upon the number of books
you plan to include, and each of those books' dimensions. You create the design of the box itself. You
must determine the number of boxes you wish to have produced in advance. And you must have a way
of distributing, marketing, and selling the boxed-sets separately from the simplicity you are accustomed
to with Outskirts Press. In other words, it's a little bit of work. But for certain authors, it is all
worthwhile to see your own series packaged in such an impressive, professional way.

Outskirts Press author Linda Rae Sande
and a boxed-set of her romance novels.

If you're in the market for creating and selling boxed sets of your books, this primer will tell you how.

BOX DIMENSIONS

Determining the dimensions of the box requires measuring the dimensions of the books to be included.
If your box-set is going to include three 6x9 books, for instance, you have two of the required
dimensions -- the height and the depth. But you also need the width -- that is, the size of the "opening"
of the cased box itself. Say the spine of each book is 1 inch wide. That means your box must be
approximately 3 inches wide. Of course, there is no such thing as "approximately" when producing
physical products, so further down we will point you to a printing/manufacturing vendor who can assist
you in determining your exact specifications (and produce your boxes for you).

BOX DESIGN

Once you have determined your box's dimensions, you need to determine what the boxed set is going to
look like. It's easiest (and least expensive) to duplicate your cover art on the outside of the box (since
that high resolution artwork already exists). But, alternatively, you can produce a unique piece of
artwork for the box itself. You'll need to determine the artwork for the sides, top, bottom, and back of
the box. You'll also determine the "color printing process" to use. 4-Color is the best.

In many cases, you can even determine some additional printing decorations, like foil stamping, screen
printing, or other tricks-of-the-trade that can really help your box "pop". Naturally, the more
complicated your box printing is, the more expensive it is (and the greater room for error you have).

BOX PRODUCTION

Like nearly any physical off-set products, the more units you order, the cheaper each unit is, so your
printer's quote will usually provide you with quantity/unit/price breaks. Remember that for each box
you order, you'll need to order enough copies of each of your books to insert into the boxed sets.
Fortunately, Outskirts Press also offers bulk discounting from within your Publishing Center, where you
can save up to 50% when ordering your own book in bulk.

FINALIZING THE BOXED-SET

Once your boxes arrive from the manufacturer and the copies of your books arrive from your publisher,
you're ready to finalize your boxed-sets. This is about as easy as you would expect. You'll slip one copy
of each of your series of books into the box. If your box dimensions are correct, the books should fit
snugly inside the box with very little wiggle-room, and just enough space to pull them out one-by-one.
You may even decide to produce two different boxed-sets, an "author signed" boxed-set (which is more
expensive naturally), and a non-author signed boxed set. You could sign the box itself and/or each of the
copies of the books inside.

MARKETING THE BOXED-SET

Once you have a final boxed set, take several digital pictures of it so you can promote and sell it. People
will want to see what your boxed set looks like. Then, upload the image, details and price to your author
webpage and/or website. Since you will be handling the fulfillment of those orders personally, you will
need to create a merchant account to accept secure online payments and receive notifications of orders.
The easiest vendor for this kind of thing is Pay Pal (http://paypal.com) but Stripe (http://stripe.com) is
also a good option. Once you have a way of taking and fulfilling orders for your boxed set, your
marketing efforts will mimic the marketing steps you've taken to promote your books individually --
that is, through social media outreach efforts, virtual book tours, promotional materials, blogging,
interviews, etc. The advantage of having a boxed set is that for the same effort it takes to promote one
single book, you can promote three (or more) books all at the same time, with a much higher price. The
higher your price, the more flexibility you have with your margins, and therefore the greater discounts
you can provide to your buyers as incentive.

SELLING THE BOXED-SET

In addition to the Pay Pal and/or Stripe merchant accounts you will need to set-up for collecting orders
from your own author webpage/website(s), you will also want to submit your boxed set to Amazon.com.
In order to do this, you need to open up your own merchant account, which you can do by clicking here.

Once your merchant account has been set-up, it will be in your best interest to also set-up a Fulfillment
by Amazon account here. That way, you can send them multiple boxed sets in advance, and then they
handle the individual order fulfillment for you, plus they notify you in advance when you need to supply
them with more boxed sets. Another bonus: your customers will qualify for free shipping through
Amazon Prime, which is something you won't be able to offer with a simple merchant account.

HOW TO GET STARTED

Visit this vendor to provide the details for your first boxed set, and get started today:
http://www.binders.com/custom-casemade-slipcases