Tyree Campbell, over at SamsDot bought one of my stories. I found out it will be published in their short story collection called Shelter of Daylight and should be available in April. I didn’t know these collections existed, but there are a bunch of different titles. Shelter of Daylight and its relatives are not listed in duotrope. They might be a good venue to place a story that otherwise might be a difficult fit. (Note to authors: Tyree wants SF or Fantasy – not Horror.)
I have to make some kind of widget to put the link on my web pages so people might buy the book.
SamsDot sells things through their GenreMall pages. Boy, would I love to rewrite that site. I could think of lots of ways to promote the books there. Besides giving it a new look, I would like to make an affiliate system where authors could put the book ads on their site and if they sold any, they would get a dollar or percentage of the sales.
J.Erwine hand crafts the site, but it must take a huge amount of his time. I think that the site would benefit from using one of the open source store systems that would automate the whole process. The only thing is that it would be less flexible. J has tweaked the GenreMall site suite over the years to wring out every last dollar. The site “ain’t broke”, but it is probably a pain to maintain.
2 Comments
“ads on their site and if they sold any, they would get a dollar or percentage of the sales.”
Not bad. I think I read where Robert J. Sawyer was saying in one of his blog posts recently that he gets $2.40 cents on every hard copy he sells.
Sawyer has his own publishing company, so that might not be typical.
Authors usually get an advance, and royalties are charged against the advance. I am under the impression that very few authors ever get any more money after the advance, never selling enough to recoup the initial payment.
SamsDot doesn’t pay an advance, at least not thousands of dollars. The cash goes to the author directly. In the case of the short story, I don’t think I get any royalties. My experience with royalties on anthologies is that you get just a dollar or two. Anthology sales are so small and the royalty split between so many people that it is not worth it. I don’t submit to anywhere that pays just royalties – only venues that pay cash up front.
If I had a novel though, I would push it. So I would make money two ways. First, I’d get a royalty payment and second, as an affiliate member I would get an additional amount as a percentage of the sale price for initiating the sale.