Easy! Just email submissions@storybundle.com with the following:
We strongly recommend all our authors to have their books professionally edited for spelling, grammar and formatting before they're submitted to us. (Beta readers are fine, but they're no substitute for a trained, professional eye.) We tend to pass on books that have too many typographical errors as it takes away from the reading experience. It's also highly recommended (but not necessary) that authors commission a high quality cover from an artist as well.
Our standard bundle length is 3 weeks. Occasionally we will have a special bundles (certain holiday bundles, for example) that will be either longer or shorter depending on the promotion. We'll tell you the specifics of the bundle you're included in once you're accepted.
We give each buyer the opportunity to choose how much they want to pay for a bundle, and they can also decide how much of their purchase goes to the author and how much goes to StoryBundle to keep our business going. There is a minimum price of instituted so that we're not losing money on bandwidth, upkeep and fees for transactions that are lower than $1. We've found that the average price paid is higher than the bonus price on our bundles so far, because readers want to not miss out on the extra books.
For each bundle, we designate standard books and bonus books. Readers can pay whatever they want and get all the standard books delivered to them, but if they pay more than a set bonus price (usually around $10), they get the bonus books as well. This incentivizes readers to pay more than the bare minimum to ensure they're not missing out on quality books.
One major benefit of being a part of StoryBundle is the increased attention and fans. Not only are you gaining thousands of new readers from StoryBundle buyers, but the inclusion of your work in StoryBundle brings you more visibility for your other works as well. Our authors have said they've gotten many more reviews, Tweets, Facebook mentions and purchases for their back catalog after being a part of a bundle.
The other major benefit is sales. Each bundle's sales are different, depending on the genre, each user's purchase price, the amount they decide to split to authors and StoryBundle, plus various other factors, but our first bundle sold 3600 copies, which brings about $3000 per book into the author's pocket. That's pretty great for just three weeks!
Our past authors have been extremely satisfied with participating in a bundle. You can see how they feel about the experienced in our author interviews, which are conducted after the bundles have finished. In short, they would love to work with us again.
The short answer is most probably yes! There are some very minor requirements we have to ask for as part of being in a bundle. If you fall under this category, please email us and tell us that you are licensing your books this way, and we'll tell you what you need to know.
DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and in practice, it's copy protection that major distributors like Amazon and iTunes put on your book so that only devices that support Kindle and iOS can read your books. In practice, this means that if you buy a book from Amazon, you have to use a Kindle, or the official Kindle app to read those books. If you have a Nook, or prefer using iBooks on your iPad, or want to use a tablet that doesn't support the Kindle app, then you're out of luck. The same idea applies to buying and selling books on the iTunes book store.
What we do is offer books in our bundle in two formats, .mobi and .epub, which are readable on just about every ereader, tablet, smartphone and computer. This means that people aren't locked into one device. For example, if they have a Kindle now and buy a Nook later, they'll still be able to enjoy your books without being forced to re-buy their library. Our buyers have contacted us after they purchased to tell us that one of the reasons why they decided to go with us was because we didn't include DRM with our books, and so they could read it on all their devices, anywhere.
Our core concept is that we're offering these great books at a pay-what-you-want price, which means that everyone should find a price they're willing to pay for the works, rather than pirate them online. Couple that with a super easy delivery system, there should be little reason for potential buyers to go and find your books illegally rather than get them via a bundle.
Yes! We don't require any exclusivity during the bundle, so you can continue selling your books as you see fit.
We're currently featuring two charities, Girls Write Now and Mighty Writers. GWN helps girls learn and develop their writing so that they can use this skill no matter what career they go into, and Mighty Writers helps teach kids creative writing skills, ensuring we have a fresh crop of writers down the line to create books for us to enjoy.
If you have your own charity that you would love to have us add to our selection, please let us know! We want to pick ones that are relevant to StoryBundle, but there can be many different ways this can happen.
Email us at submissions@storybundle.com with any questions you have regarding submitting and being a part of StoryBundle. We'll be happy to talk through all of them with you!
