Hi all,
I produce and sell a fairly specialized book and normally every year I have just the printed version (and its PDF counterpart). This year I’m trying something new but I’m not sure how to present it. Starting this week I will be offering the new 2025 book with three different full-color cover pairs instead of just one, but the contents will be identical. At the moment it’s set up as three distinct products and will go live on Tuesday morning, but I’m wondering if there’s any advantage of going with variants on one product or leaving it as three separate products. I expect total sales will only be about 400-500 across all three variants, so this isn’t a big operation we’re talking about here.
And in the same vein, there will invariably be a handful of customers who will want to buy two or even all three just for the cover images, and I would like to offer them discounts; a 15% discount for any two, and a 20% discount for all three. I can’t see a way to do this using the Discounts/Automatic Discount tab. I can offer it on all three with a minimum purchase or minimum quantity, but I that doesn’t factor in the two different ones I want to offer. How can I accomplish this?
Thanks in advance.
@NYCTrackbook , it looks like what you need it a tiered volume discount which is not available natively. I suggest you try our app, Discount Bot, to set this up:
On the admin, create the tiers you want. Please note the selection of the quantity breaks checkbox. This will prevent, for example, the 4th book from getting a discount while still allowing 3 books to get the 30% discount.
And here’s how the app automatically splits the items in the cart based on number of books added:
Two books in cart get 15% discount:
Four books in cart get 30% discount for 3 of them, but the 4th book is full priced (un-check quantity breaks checkbox if you want all 4 to get 30% discount):
Five books in cart get 30% discount to 3, 15% discount to 2. (un-check quantity breaks checkbox if you want all 5 to get 30% discount):
Please note that it doesn’t matter if your books are setup as separate products or variants - just make sure you select the products / variants you want the discount to work on.
This works with all themes as the app is build using discount functions. In case of any questions, please feel free to reply.
Hi @NYCTrackbook 
The main thing is to make it brain dead simple to switch between types.
Separate products can be good if there is an expectation for some visitors/searchers to only be looking for their specific version of the book (i.e. softback vs hardback) from the internet or shared links, social media, etc.
With tradeoff being you now have more things to manage in different areas, compounded if items share the same inventory item for some reason.
A collection page to show all related products as a landing page may be ideal in some situations; if visitors arrive there without a type preference already in mind from either advertising or their internet search.
Through advanced theme customizations separate products can be presented a singular product, ala sibling-products aka product famileis (similar to combined listings for shopify Plus enterprise plans).
Vice versa for one product with separate variants it is also possible to setup different /pages for each variant.
Depends on the effort and results wanted.
For multiple items with different prices look at bundles
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/products/bundles
If you need setup services, or theme customization services then contact me.
Contact info in forum signature.
ALWAYS please provide context, examples: store url, theme name, post url(s) , or any further detail in ALL correspondence.
Hi @NYCTrackbook ,
If this requires syncing the inventory of three product listings, you can consider using our app, Inventory Sync GoGo. With this app, you can sell multiple Shopify products that share the same base physical SKU, and it will sync the inventory levels in real time.
Well that does look like a good solution, however at $30/month it’s far out of my price range. I don’t expect I’ll sell more than 5 or possibly 10 multi-book combination orders over the course of a year, and that’s only if I’m very very lucky. It just wouldn’t be cost effective, unfortunately. But for big shops this really is a good product!
Hi @NYCTrackbook ,
Here’s my suggestion for your review:
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Since you don’t have many products, consider creating your books with the 3 different covers as separate products.
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Additionally, you could create two more products as savings bundles: a “2-Book Savings” bundle with a 15% discount and a “3-Book Savings” bundle with a 20% discount.
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Because you have three different covers, the “2-Book Savings” bundle would need to include various cover combinations for customers to choose from (e.g., Cover 1 & 2, 1 & 3, 2 & 3).
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Lastly, you can use Easify Inventory Sync to create inventory groups that link the individual products and the bundle products, ensuring accurate inventory management. If you’d like to try this solution, let me know, and I can guide you through setting it up with the app.
Many online stores with a limited product range use this approach to make their catalog look more diverse and to encourage customers to take advantage of bundle deals. Hope that you find my suggestion useful for your store 
!
