Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing EP 009 - Collaborative Publishing with Chuck Heintzelman from BundleRabbit
Featuring an interview with Chuck Heintzelman of BundleRabbit.com.
Chuck lives in Spokane, WA with his beautiful wife and three children. Each day he juggles his passion for writing with his family, a full-time job as a computer programmer, and the inevitable curve ball life seems to throw.
In the introduction to the show, Mark talks about being on the Oregon Coast at the Fiction River writer workshops which leads into this week's post-interview "reflection" about rejection for writers. He also talks a little about the success he has had with Findaway Voices (the episode's sponsor) for short audio books and how he measures success.
In their conversation, Mark and Chuck talk about:
- The origin and inspiration for Bundlerabbit, a service inspired by Storybundle and Humble Bundle, that allow authors to combine their ebooks into bundles
- Chuck’s “What if?” related to that which began with: “Wouldn’t it be great if there was a more DIY option for authors and publishers?”
- The basic concept which is a single website you can go to where you can upload content, curate bundles and communicate about bundle collaborations with other authors
- How Bundlerabbit solves two major issues:
- The ability for readers to get the bundled material from a retailer they already buy from (rather than having to side-load the content to their Kindle, Kobo, etc)
- Revenue splitting and other accounting issues that authors might run into when trying to manage a multi-author collaboration
- How Joanna Penn and her desire to see a “collaboration engine” helped inspire Chuck to add a feature called “collaborative publishing” which includes:
- The ability for a curator/editor/publishing project manager to set unique author split percentages for a project and use this tool to publish on behalf of the publisher and take care of the monthly revenue split
- Using this tool for management of co-authoring a single title (rather than bundling multiple works together)
- The percentage that Bundlerabbit keeps (ie, the business model and how Bundlerabbit can afford to operate)
- Some of the forthcoming features that Bundlerabbit will be releasing that are related to the ability for authors and publishers to better communicate with one another and share information, marketing assets, etc.
- The potential for using Bundlerabbit for author/translator collaborations (and how that might compare to an existing platform like Babelcube)
- The original OOPS name for Bundlerabbit: Bundles Express Dot Com and the amusing “Bundle Sex Press” term that Chuck didn’t originally see.
After the interview, Mark talks about the FICTION RIVER anthology workshops and how it works. He takes an in depth look at rejection, and the importance of a writer to understand what rejection most likely means and how that lies directly to an ideal reader or ideal editor
Links of Interest
- Bundlerabbit for authors
- Chuck’s Website - http://chuckheintzelman.com/
- Kydala Publishing (Chuck’s Publishing Imprint)
- Chuck's Author Page on Amazon
- WMG Publishing
--------- This episode has been sponsored by Findaway Voices. Findaway Voices provides all the tools that an independent author or small publisher needs in order to get into the digital audiobook market.
Check them out at www.starkreflections.ca/findaway.
---------