Creating an E-Book Omnibus

I am still a baby author, but I’ve taken a few large leaps this week. I commissioned character art for the first time. I’m creating more trial reels. And I’m releasing an ebook bundle of my Saxons of Hyrstow trilogy.

I’ve gotta say: sometimes the low-hanging fruit is a good grab.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you may know I have no plans to release a new book this year. I’m working on a new series to be released in 2027. Yet, the indie market needs to be fed. It is competitive. If an author is not releasing something regularly, it’s difficult to stay in readers’ front of mind.

Enter: a bundle of books. A boxed set. A collection, if you will. Completing my first series is something I had worked toward for three years. I triumphantly published the final book in The Saxons of Hyrstow trilogy in the summer of 2025. Don’t ask me why it took me almost a year to think about compiling the series into an ebook collection. Perhaps because my sights were set on the holiday novella, Shred the Season, which I released in November of the same year. Or, maybe it’s because life was busy and I thought I’d left my Saxon friends behind for a while. Either way, it dawned on me that I had three perfectly good products sitting on my computer that could be compiled into one big ebook for readers to enjoy for a discounted price!

The nitty gritty: The Saxons of Hyrstow series is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. This means that the ebook is exclusive to KU and I am not allowed to sell it on other platforms like Kobo. I made this choice when I first opted to self-publish, as the Kindle Unlimited program is good for discoverability for new authors. I don’t know if I will keep my books in the program forever, but for now, they’re exclusive to Kindle. As a result, I can release the Saxons of Hyrstow Complete Trilogy Boxed Set through KU as well.

How to do this?

I first considered a cover. I didn’t want to hire a cover designer to make a cover for this set since I was aiming to keep costs low. Thankfully, I’ve been learning how to improve my book cover creation skills in Canva. I spent an afternoon pulling designs together. I used stock photos so as to not conflict with Canva’s commercial licensing terms, and learned a little about design along the way. Is it as nice a design as a pro cover designer could have made me? No. It’s not. For the zero cost, I’m okay with that. Plus, as I tell my kids when they are working on a project, done is better than perfect.

Next, I use software called Vellum to compile my Word file into a book. The software formats the title pages, margins, page breaks, etc., into an EPUB format that can then be uploaded to a self-publishing platform like KDP Select, Ingram Spark, or Book Vault. I have all the original book files on my computer, so I merged His Viking Captive, His Saxon Wife, and Her Reckless Revenge into one huge Word document (297,017 words!). Then I imported that document into Vellum, tinkered with the format to ensure everything looked great, and voilá—the complete boxed set was born.

Finally, I prepared the book for release in the Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard by uploading the manuscript and cover, choosing the price ($8.99 in the US and Canada), and picking the release date. Bing, bang, boom—a day’s worth of work to generate a new product for readers.

Why would someone want this ebook bundle when they can just buy the individual ebooks? Especially if the books are enrolled in Kindle Unlimited and therefore “free” with their subscription? Two reasons. If a reader is not enrolled in KU, all three of the Saxons of Hyrstow books are $13 total. This bundle saves readers money for a lower price of $8.99. The second is read through. Offering the complete trilogy as one long book allows for continuous reading if the reader enjoyed the first. There is no delay between finishing one of the books and downloading and then reading the next.

As an author and, ultimately, small business owner, I need to look at my journey through various lenses. I love writing, and I love offering more to potential readers to keep them invested. Time will tell if the bundle is a good decision. In the meantime, I hope you found this article helpful. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic in the comments!

Cayley