Bundle Dragon (3 months in)

Can you believe it’s already been 3 months since the fractal book was released?

A few weeks ago I experienced one of the rare pleasures of being a writer, getting paid. Depending on how you look at it the fractal book is doing modestly well to super freaking fantastic considering it’s on a niche subject by an unknown author.

I’m very happy with how things are going, and I owe that in large part to the Bundle Dragon service.

Lots of personal attention

Bundle Dragon was kind enough to let me into their closed beta so I could get in on the ground floor before their public launch (around the same time as my book). From the beginning I’ve gotten personalized attention from their support staff, often receiving responses from their president Josh Whelchel to my MANY questions. In fact, Josh was the first one to buy my book. But everyone on their support staff is helpful, knowledgeable, and friendly, and problems tend to be resolved in less than 24 hours. You can’t get that kind of attention from Amazon.

Professional Looking Store

Let’s face it, Amazon looks kind of … dowdy. Their book cover art is small, and their site utilitarian. I don’t have a lot of customization to change how things look, and a lot of products that aren’t mine are shown on the same screen. Bundle Dragon is sleek, and is one of the few sites I’ve used where I’m happy when they randomly update their platform. The sites are stable in all browsers, and load quickly, even with a lot of pretty pictures.

Your name here

Bundle Dragon was also nice enough to feature my bundle on their main page for the last several months. This is especially nice when a very popular bundle is run, and people click over out of curiosity. I’ve probably gotten more sales because of the Game Music Bundle and the Big Bad Bundle than I would have otherwise.

Better royalty

My effective royalty for Bundle Dragon is around 80%. If I had sold with Amazon exclusively it would have been around 43% (possibly less). Nonexclusive, I get 35% from Amazon, and 65% from Barnes and Noble (though it seems few people have Nooks these days). And unlike Amazon, people can pay a little extra if they want to support the author, or just really like the book. This has actually happened a couple of times and is a really nice thing to see. People can be nicer than you’d think.

The book I wanted to offer

There’s no way Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple or any of them could have supported the package I was able to put together on Bundle Dragon. An hour of video, 100s of pictures and two books. I did a lot of work putting the fractal book together, and I wanted to share all that I had learned with people buying the book, and give them more to enjoy for their buck.

Bottom Line

I like Bundle Dragon so much I’m tempted to work on more projects that can be sold in this way. I already have another in the works in fact, and projections for a few more. It’s a very indie minded site, open to anyone wanting to sell their original material. If you have enough material to bundle in this way, I highly recommend it, even just to try it. You might be surprised how well you’ll do.