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Designer Diary Bundle of Holding & ICONS Assembled

For the rest of May Bundle of Holding are running two ICONS Assembled bundles. The first is the rules, and supplements, the second is the setting or the ICONS Universe.

Why is this significant?

I have an ICONS Assembled compatible book, and for everyone who buys either bundle is a potential customer. They are also a potential convert to solo play, but that is a different topic. For me, the ICONS bundles are a great opportunity. The last few bundles were a 5e/Pathfinder adventure path and the Dusk City Outlaws.

Dusk City Outlaws has an SRD for there 100AC game engine. This means that I could easily write for Dusk City and any game driven by the game engine. I also know that these bundles sell by the thousand, which means that there will be an audience if I do support the game.

So, even looking at the last four bundles, three of them are useful, two for something I have that I have now, and a third that I could use in the future.

The current bundles are the most interesting. Ad Infinitum Adventures want to sell more bundles, Bundle of Holding want to sell more bundles, and the more bundles that sell, the more potential customers for my book there are. Therefore I want the bundle to sell.

We are all working towards the same goal.

There are two things within my power. The first is I can choose to promote the bundle and my own title, or not. The second is that I can choose to may my own title more attractive, by dropping the price for a limited time.

If I don’t promote the bundle, I could in theory still get a boost in sales, but my titles in only available in two places at the moment, and neither of them are mentioned on the bundle homepage. There is no real gain in not promoting the bundle.

I could leave the price the same and if I do get a bump in sales, I will get the maximum earnings from it.

That is all the least possible work, doing nothing combined with doing nothing.

Now, imagine I put some effort in.

I choose to advertise the bundle. What will happen is that the bundle may gain a few extra sales. Those sales become potential customers for my book. That is a bonus. If I advertise the bundle, I am likely to gain some goodwill from Bundle of Holding and Ad Infinitum. Goodwill is never a bad thing. If I advertise the bundle on social media I may get shares and retweets which can extend my reach. This is also a good thing.

If I drop the price of my book until the end of May, I may earn less per sale, but I have created a time limited window. This is called scarcity in marketing. That is why you see sales screaming Must End Soon!, or Last Day! and all that sort of thing. Scarcity is a powerful motivator, and limiting the sale to the same time period as the bundle makes your offer part of a much bigger offer.

Creating your own offer gives you more directly relevant content, or message to share. The first people who see my tweets are my own followers. I value my followers, they are not numbers, they are people who frequently share my interest in solo play. If I am going to tell them to spend their valuable time looking at the bundle of a game they don’t play, it is only fair to give them something for their time. In this case it is a discount so they can immediately play this game they just bought, if they buy into the bundle. I cannot compete with Bundle of Holding’s nearly 90% off, but 40% is a pretty decent discount.

I think the balance firmly comes down on the side of helping push the bundle, and hitch my book to that wagon.

There are 50+ bundles on Bundle of Holding each year. About the same on Humble Bundle, although less are RPG related. Watch the site and pick out the ones that work best for your products.

As an addendum, when I shared the video above on twitter….

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