I’ve been quiet in here lately. Doing a lot of thinking, a bit of planning, and a lot of resting. I had no idea how tired I was.
But I’m not so tired now, and cool things are happening.
First, thanks to Margaret Fisk, the HollyShop affiliate program is finally working, and the first commissions are starting to land in folks’ accounts.
You do not have to have bought Create a Character Clinic to join the affiliate program. If you just want to make some money, that’s fine. Join, post links in your community sigs, e-mail sigs, or on your site or weblog, and start getting paid.
Second cool news. The full store will open on Friday, (the day after tomorrow). Why is this cool news?
Because it makes possible the thing I hinted at, but that I haven’t been talking about, and that I have, in fact, been holding my breath about, just in case it turned out not to be possible to implement. It’s possible, it’s doable, it’s just about done, and it starts on Friday.
I’m opening up the shop to e-books by other writers.
One of the most frustrating things about being a full-time professional writer is dependence on publishers’ schedules when getting paid. This can be a nightmare; a lot of us have been there.
Shop.HollyLisle.Com will pay authors monthly, and thanks to Margaret’s beautiful programming, authors will be able to track their sales, see the exact amount of money due to them at any time, and have their payment land monthly in their PayPal account. Affiliates will be able to link to and sell any book on the site, authors can place their books on any other site (that doesn’t impose restriction) if they choose, and authors can be affiliates as well, and make some extra money that way.
I won’t be accepting everything. For now, I’m interested in seeing:
Manuscripts between 20,000-50,000 words
Nonfiction only
On writing or other subjects of interest to writers (finance, research, subjects that would make interesting background for fiction)
You’ll retain all rights to your book, and it can be removed from the store the same day you request its removal by email.
You’ll determine the amount of money you want to make per book (understanding that on sales made through affiliates, up to 33% of the sale price will go to the affiliates.)
QUERY only. E-mail queries to onemoreword@hollylisle.com. Include your credentials and a brief description of the book you want to write. If I accept your manuscript, I’ll help you put it into PDF format and can help you with cover design if you need it.
Comments? Questions?
How many fan letters have to be sent to Baen to get HUNTING THE CORRIGAN’S BLOOD reprinted? Hey, it works for TV shows…
This is an awsome idea Holly. I have a few ideas for non fiction books I would like to write, but I’m not sure if I have the experince behind me yet… But, I probably will make a query in the future, if I can sort my thoughts out!
Here’s the with OneMoreWord Books: Initially, I want books on writing for writers. I have a very clear idea of what I want to see in this, I’m familiar with the terrain, I know good stuff when I see it, and because of this I can make sure that quality is high and that buyers are getting books that will benefit them. At the same time, I can benefit the writers by paying monthly, by keeping author royalties really high, and by keeping the entire process transparent (authors will never wonder how many copies they’ve sold or how much of that money will come back to them.)
I’ll be republishing my own backlist, too.
As for the Lawrence Watt-Evans thing — I want to write the next Cadence Drake novel. I might do it as a chapter-by-chapter subscription thing, then put together and e-book and POD book. Not sure. There are a lot of options. But like Watt-Evans, I’m exploring alternative publishing, because I have an extensive backlist, and I want to have it back in print, and I want to write more books in some of my old universes.
Getting all those titles back in print will be a gradual process. I won’t be leaving commercial publishing, and commercial deadlines must by default come before my own arbitrary deadlines.
This is, for now, a second business that I see benefiting a lot of people besides me.
Time will tell.
Wow. You go. etc. etc. etc.
Very cool! 🙂
That is wonderful! I’m hoping that one of your acceptance criteria wil be that the books are as practical as CCC. My biggest problem with most writing books is that they never really tell you how.
Have you ever considered something like what Lawrence Watt-Evans did?
Here’s the link
http://www.ethshar.com/thesprigganexperiment0.html
Basically it’s an installment plan for what he wanted to write and fans wanted to see, versus which series was making money for the publishers.
Really cool.
sounds like a good idea, but are you only currently accepting non fiction works?