On Friday, eBookNewser wrote about Christian Owens, a 16-year-old millionaire who made his fortune by bundling Mac applications. We wondered if this young entrepreneur’s business model could work for eBooks as well. Our readers responded with some passionate comments.
Dave Cullen wrote: “I hate to shoot down any idea too quickly, but solutions based upon cutting the prices even further sounds awful for writers like me.”
Bear Mountain Books disagreed: “I could see bundles working. Harlequin used to bundle a couple of authors together in one book (maybe they still do). You’d read one, flip the book and read the other. Could work to intro an author.”
Hardy Green wrote: “Many years ago Steve Brill suggested bundling an e-book along with the printed edition of the same book. This, he felt, would give the reader choice and allow e-books to become more popular. Still a good idea.”
Bjarne Buset wrote: “Why bundle something that is under-priced through fierce price war already? Bundle it with the full price paper edition and give it away for free.”
Living Hour had this suggestion: A similar thing could be done by certain self-published authors who write short books and sell them initially for 99 cents a pop. Then they collect all of their 99 cent books into a larger work at a significantly reduced price. This would be especially effective for education related books that teach the reader how to do something.”
Nathan Kurt Johnson concluded: “The new Agency Model pricing for eBooks (championed by Apple) brought about an end to bundles of eBooks as the publishers specifically prohibited bundling, which might have been a way for retailers to circumvent their fixed pricing.”