Creating Custom Book Boxes
K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of month you’d like to be. Welcome to The Writer’s Triangle, a podcast about publishing and all things books. And today I’m going to talk about something really fun that we did. And that is we created custom boxes for our trilogy, The Fallinheim Chronicles, which I absolutely, I am absolutely in love with them. I love that we did it, it was a lot of fun, I’m going to break down how we did it and give you the numbers of how much everything costs that went into it so that you can decide whether or not it’s worthwhile for you to do for your books. The reason that we did it is we have quite a lengthy PR list. And we thought it would be a really fun gift to give all to get everyone on our PR list. This great the series, right, we get to send it all on three books, they get to unbox the books, it’s also a really cool video for people to have and content to create, as that they opened the books. And it allowed us to extend our PR list a bit. Because we were we worked with the company and the company that we work for to do it is a marketing company called books forward. And we had a really positive experience with them. The books, all of the boxes went out on time. So I’m located in Japan, and most of our PR list is they’re located in the United States and throughout the world. But we don’t have anybody on our PR list in Japan, which I find really interesting. So to make the boxes here ourselves, and to do them in country would have been really expensive in terms of shipping. So it was a lot easier to hire a company that’s based in the United States, and then shipped from there. And most of the boxes went to North America and and Europe, we didn’t really have a lot of requests for the box isn’t in other areas. And that’s okay, you know, it just seems like the series is more popular in North America. And in Europe, we do have some fans of the series and Australia, but not really so much in Asia. And some of our books do really good in Asia, but our middle grade for some reason is not as popular in Asia. Hmm, I wonder why that is something for me to think about. I’ve got this is about whether or not creating a box would be. So basically, what we chose to include in the box was a ballpoint pen that had our logo on it. cinnabar moth publishing to advertise us the publisher, we had a bookmark, which just kind of standard for every book box, you get a bookmark. And then we had a notebook. And the reason we included a notebook is because that is always writing everything down. So that was specific to the characters. And I thought it would be nice to have something that would be useful to the people who were unboxing it and to give them something that’s not usually included in a box. Because the types of things that are usually included in the box to me, I feel like Duncan’s value added to the receiver.
K
We did do another box once before and we included snacks in that box. And I wasn’t really happy with including snacks because I don’t know allergies, or food sensitivities. And so I feel like including snacks as kind of dicier. And I didn’t really feel as comfortable. So I really liked the idea of the notebook because it’s specific to our one of our characters and specific to the series. So as they’re reading up, they’ll be like, Ah, okay, this makes total sense. Now that I read it test, you get a cool notebook and who doesn’t like notebooks, right who can’t use the notebook. So that was our thinking and creating the box on the outside of the box. So the art that you need is you need art for the bookmark. And the bookmark is two sided. So art for both sides of that. And you also need art for the box. And you need an artist who is able to then create the box. So the making of the box itself that everything goes into. We found it easier to just hire a company that could do the graphics for that and make it into box shape to make it easiest and it had a nice little saying in the front so it had a graphic design on the outside and we went with the final the cover of Book Three to use that as the inspiration because there are a lot of different paintings and murals that are on the cover of Book Three So having empty paintings and such on the box made the box flow nicely. And then the inside of the box tied in more to I want to say book one. And then we had the three books inside. And for the art and the books and mailing it out, not the cost of the book themselves. It cost us I think 6000 USD, I want to say, to have everything made. And then the shipping and handling will vary depending on how many people you want to ship to, I don’t know where you’re shipping from, our shipping and handling vary wildly because we did ship to basically four different regions in the world. And so I can’t give you shipping and handling on that. But that’s something that you can figure out by googling it, where you would want to ship the books to you. There’s the $6,000 that we spent, were for just the creation. And that was the creation of the box. And all of the art has to be created from scratch. So you can’t use any of your existing art, because it has to be resized. And if you take your book cover and does a blow up an element from it, it’s really hard to get the pixelation correctly, so that it has a crisp rendering.
K
So we went with just completely creating the books from the boxes from scratch. Some authors can choose I guess, to just blow up an image from your book and make it into a box. So the main thing that we paid for was art creation. And then we of course, we had to pay for the pens to be made. And for the notebooks to be made. And the notebooks were a little bit more expensive than the bookmarks. I want to say that the bookmarks only for all of them only cost about $150 for all of them to be made. But I’m not sure. So I’m just looking at the overall cost is $6,000. And for me, it was worth it to send out to create the box and send it out. But I will own that I get absolutely delighted when I see social media posts about our books, they throw me. And that’s what I paid for. It was a marketing expense. I didn’t look at it as selling books, I, the point of the boxes, of course of everything we do, is to sell books. But I also wanted to raise awareness of the books, and be value added for everyone to want to join our PR list. So as a press, I’m not just looking at what’s going to sell the individual books, I’m looking at what’s going to raise awareness of us as a press. And I think even if you’re an individual author, you have to think about what’s going to raise awareness of your brand. And discoverability is the biggest hurdle to book sales,
K
I think, in my opinion. And you have to think is it worth it. Because when we send our books out, we’re very, very lucky the majority of our peer list post on time in the way that we ask. We’re very, very lucky in that regard. So building our PR lists and sending these books out. What I found is that for the individuals who got the boxes, I found that they were more likely to make multiple posts with a box than a single post. And we weren’t included with any other books, which meant that we got a solo post. And what I mean by solo post is if you have a typical unboxing where they’re like, you know, a reviewer is unboxing a lot of different books from a lot of different authors. You’re not getting that solo post of just your book for the unboxing. So what I found that a lot of people did is that they we got the solo post of receiving their box and unboxing the box and showing what was in it. We also got a bonus post of people using the things that came in the box using the pen and the notebook which is not something I had expected, which for me as bonus content people saying how well the pen writes and I was super relieved that the pen wrote very smoothly. And we also then got of course, the three reviews for each of the books and so we were able to get five post And I also found that people were posting across multiple settings. And most multiple accounts, we got a lot of tick tock I think for anything we’ve we’ve mailed out that that box received the most tech talk post of any of our books that we’ve sent out, which I was really happy for, I’m really excited about. And it also received a lot of Facebook, and Instagram posts, and on Instagram, got posts and reels. So it we were able to exponential exponentially expand the reach of that book and the discoverability of the series, because when you’re looking at multiple posts on multiple types of social media, for us alone, that discoverability boost was really worth it. And that’s something that you have to consider the timeline for making the book it did take for making the boxes, it did take about five months, for from the idea through, mail out. And the reason that it took us about five months is it took us about a month to settle on the design. And then it took another month. Because once we settle on the design, and the elements that we’re going to have in it, then of course it has to go into production. So from design to finish product was two months, and then it gets offered to the PR list who wants it, that’s another month, and then sending it out is month four. And once you mail it out, it can take anywhere from a week to a month to arrive. And that’s how we get the five month timeline. And I say five months because I like to give lead time for everyone to get the books, read them and then review. And what we were going for in this is we were wanting a lot of serious reviews because book, the third book in the series was being published. And so for me having that discoverability and having people rediscover books one and two was really exciting, because then that, of course is going to motivate them to want to finish the story and read book three is my thinking and what we were going for in terms of book sales.
K
To be honest, I didn’t see a spike in book sales, post book box, box receipt, and the boxes went out and everybody received them in May, June. And it’s August now. And what I find with any sort of marketing that we do, it can take as many as six months for us to see the results of that marketing. And then to with our sales report, our sales report ended the right before the launch month was the way that our sales report works, it was just for me, I felt like a little bit of bad luck. So we don’t have all the data and from all our distributors just yet to see what sort of spike it had. But in terms of pre sales, we didn’t see a spike in pre sales. But I would think that will be normal. Because the only thing that we had in the month of May, we had a few unboxings. But most of the videos happened in the month of June. And that was the month that the book was launched. So maybe I kind of jumped the gun on I’m making this video, but I was just so excited the box experience was so positive for me. And I hope that it was really positive for for the author as well. They didn’t really comment on their experience, but I feel like they weren’t really involved. It was just something that the press did. And of course, we made them aware of it. And we did send them a box for them to use as a giveaway or what have you. And we always encourage everyone on our PR list to after they read our books to please feel free to use them as giveaways or to donate them to their local library or their their local school because we’re looking at letting those books migrate right and if they’re not going to be reading them. So getting some of our PR lists had two copies of the books and they kept one copy for themselves. A lot of them donated to their local school or library. And so you’re looking at that’s just another pass it forward kind of thing that happens pay it forward. And we really love that. So deciding if any sort of marketing is the right thing for you, I think is looking at your budget and how much of your marketing budget do you want to give to just one marketing item? And for us when we start a series and we’re looking at the total cost for the series? We do Consider how we want to rap the series. And what we’re going to do to promote that rap. Because then the book gets promoted as a series, and we don’t really promote single books anymore, we then start promoting the entire series, because that just makes sense, right? It’s not like what the book one or two, we are promoting that single book and hoping that that books discoverability brings awareness to the series. And there are other things that you can do that are more cost effective, I think. And one of the things that I know some indie publishers do that we haven’t done is that you can end Kindle, you can have all three books under one cover, and then just slide covers in between the books and sell the book that way, and offer it as a discount on Kindle. I don’t know of any print on demand printers that will do book bundles. But if I do come across any you know, I’ll get on the mic and be sure to share about them.
K
So I just this today is a rather quick one, a short one. And I just wanted to come on and say our experience with with making book boxes was so much fun, and picking all of the elements. And the response that we get just really blew my mind. And that’s our first trilogy to wrap. You know, we’re a relatively new process really exciting for us that we wrapped our first trilogy, and it was a major milestone for the press. And it felt like a celebration of us of the series of the book. And it just felt a really great way to celebrate that entire journey. So a lot of different factors went into the decision making process to decide to do books. So I guess I’m just here celebrating with y’all. And I also, you know, I gave you some numbers and let you know how much it cost to do that. That one project. And yeah, and what went into it, and the timeline and all of that. So we’re really thrilled, we hope that you pick up the series and get into it. It’s an awesome middle grade series. And thank you so much for listening, and I hope that you celebrate with us and give this video a thumbs up and celebrate us wrapping our first trilogy, because that’s huge, like, Yay, we’re oppressed. And we’re still here, and we’re still publishing and said that’s exciting for us. And I think all of our beautiful cinnabar moth for listening. You don’t have to be a cinnabar moth. It can be any kind of moth you want to be or you can even be a butterfly but I’m not Mariah Carey. I’m not trying to bite her rhyme. Talk to you next week. Bye