A box (or boxed) set is a group of related items – books, recordings of music or films, games – packaged together and sold as a single unit. With traditional book publishing these collections are literally presented in a cardboard box. With modern print-on-demand and electronic publishing the box is a virtual concept, though some ebook sets do have 3D covers. The set may contain either a series of titles arranged in the correct order, or a selection of related titles by one or more authors. Usually costing considerably less than than the sum of their individual parts, they are currently very popular. My own first (and last?) box set Three Novellas: Carmen’s Roses, Blue Moon for Bombers, The Windflower Vibration combines the three short books which I published last year and is available in paperback or ebook versions from Amazon and other online stores.
It can be very easy to create a box set just by combining the original files, and I would certainly advise against making non-essential changes to their content. But when I made mine I did take some time to merge the front matter and back matter; to correct a couple of typos which I had missed before; and to adjust for any discrepancies in formatting. For example I found that my use of italic script as opposed to quotation marks, and of UK as opposed to US spelling, had not been consistent between the three books.
In Carmen’s Roses, an Englishwoman visits Auckland in the hope of recovering from a serious illness, and of finding forgiveness for an incident related to a love affair from her past. Blue Moon for Bombers is set in middle England, and tells the story of a World War Two airman coming to terms with his repressed trauma, interwoven with a modern romance. In The Windflower Vibration, featuring some of the same characters and settings as the previous books, a sudden death on an Auckland beach sparks off a quest to unravel a complex web of mysteries spanning two centuries and two hemispheres. Many people have asked me if they are autobiographical, and the answer is “not exactly”, but they do reflect some of the themes from my own life: moving from England to New Zealand, practising both orthodox and alternative medicine, interests in animals, music, aviation and the paranormal. Here again is the link to the Amazon page – if you are interested please have a look, and share with your contacts – thank you.
Jennifer Barraclough 