The differences between bundles and collaborations on BundleRabbit

BundleRabbit was initially created as a story bundling platform. It now offers another feature: collaborative projects, often referred to as ‘collaborations.’

Terminology

curator: The person who organizes the bundle/collaboration. (Note that curation for a single collection may be done by several people working together, just like an anthology could have multiple editors.)

author: An author of a story included in a bundle/collaboration.

content marketplace: An area on BundleRabbit where curators can browse existing ebooks and contact authors to invite them to participate in a bundle.

What is a bundle on BundleRabbit?

A bundle is a collection of ebooks that is organized by a curator. It’s essentially a box set of stories, whether they’re short stories, novellas, novels, or a combination. The curator selects the stories, and BundleRabbit compiles all of the the ebooks into one big ebook.

What does the curator do?

• Sets the theme for the bundle.
• Decides what story lengths are allowed.
• Invites authors to participate. This can be done by contacting an author personally, by requesting a story via the content marketplace on BundleRabbit, or by a combination of both depending on the author/story.
• Each ebook has its own cover and sales copy, both provided by the author; the curator is responsible for creating the cover and sales copy for the entire collection.

What is a collaborative project (aka collaboration) on BundleRabbit?

A collaborative project, or collaboration, is a collection of stories organized by a curator. It’s closer to an anthology than to a box set. The curator selects the stories and combines them all into an ebook.

What does the curator do?

• Sets the theme for the bundle.
• Decides what story lengths are allowed.
• Invites authors to participate. This is currently done by contacting the author personally (i.e. not through the content marketplace, although you can find authors/stories there and then contact them offline).
• Creates the cover and sales copy for the entire collection.

What are the differences between bundles and collaborative projects?

What	Bundle	Collaboration
Percentage of revenue split between curator & authors	75% 5% goes to the curator; the rest is split equallybetween the authors	90% The curator sets the percentage that goes to each person involved in the collaboration; different percentages can be given to different people
Available on BundleRabbit	yes	no (will likely be added in 2018)
Available on other sales channels (Amazon, etc.)	yes	yes
Print available?	no	yes
Ebook formatting, cover, sales copy	Each author formats their own ebook, provides their own cover, and writes their own sales copy; the curator provides one overall cover, and writes the sales copy for the collection	Authors provide their manuscripts to the curator; the curator formats the single ebook, provides one cover, and writes the sales copy for the collection
Formatting consistency	Formatting varies by author	The curator formats the ebook, and can choose to have consistent formatting for all stories

In either situation, the curator may act as an editor – however, this would be handled between the authors/curator directly (i.e. outside of BundleRabbit).

Summary

Which approach a curator should pick will depend on factors like the content being included, the amount of work the curator intends to invest in creating the collection, and the goals of the curator.

For example, if you’re creating a collection that will include ten novels, a bundle will allow each author to format their own book exactly how they want it – which means that there could be significant differences in formatting from book to book. A collection of ten short stories, however, might look better if all of the stories were formatted the same way.

One way to think about this is to compare a collection to the more traditional forms of anthologies and box sets. In an anthology, there’s a standard look and feel; with a box set, each title can look very different.

A collaboration requires more work from the curator, since the curator must combine all of the manuscripts into one ebook; with a bundle, BundleRabbit does the combination.

A collaboration also provides a finer level of control. For example, the curator can write an introduction to the collection, an afterward, and can do custom things like add images in between each story; with a bundle, the formatting is handled by BundleRabbit, and cannot be customized.

Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages – you just need to figure out which one works best for your situation.

And regardless of whether or not you go with a bundle or a collaboration, BundleRabbit handles the revenue split, and takes care of delivering royalty payments to the curator and the authors. 🙂

References

• BundleRabbit: Collaborative Publishing
• BundleRabbit: Bundling for authors
• BundleRabbit: Bundling for curators