Sorry this post is so late, but I had a meeting with a professor at my school this morning and I wasn’t able to write the blog at my normal time. Should be back on schedule now.
So, when I was a teacher of 6th Grade Language Arts, one of the teachers who taught 8th Grade discovered that I was into creative writing and a published author and she wanted to show her support by buying my work on Amazon as it was the end of the school year and both she and I were leaving (she was going to a new school and I was leaving the teaching profession to come to graduate school). I was so grateful and happy that she wanted to read/purchase my writing. And then she asked if the purchase would benefit me in any way because she really wanted to help support me as a writer. I was so grateful, but I had to admit that no, there aren’t royalties to publishing short fiction like there was for books and novels–the purchase would only help me tangentially by the fact that supporting the publishers would allow them to stay in business and perhaps publish more of my stories later, but no, the actual purchase that she made wouldn’t help me directly. She still made the purchase (Thanks, Ms. L!) and enjoyed the work, but I felt kinda’ bad that I had no way to have her purchase of my works help me out directly as this was part of her purpose in buying them.
Going Commercial?
I tell that story to sort of explain why I chose to set-up an Amazon Associate program in that it allows me to (finally) come up with a way for those who want to purchase my things to benefit both the publishers who publish my work (they get money to stay in business and hopefully publish me or other writers in the future) and myself (I get a small percentage of the sale for those who click on the Amazon links and buy it directly through the links.)
Oh, so you’re commercializing the blog?
Nope. I’ve been a Bookseller at Waldenbooks and I am convinced that it was management’s decision to focus on the selling of the loyalty card rather than focusing on their core business, i.e., selling books, as the key that kept them from seeing and responding to the challenge of larger retailers like Barnes & Noble and the online presence and power, of well, Amazon and this help speed their demise.
I’m a professional writer and that’s what I do. That is where my love is and that’s where I will continue to put my focus. I only want to 1) give those who want to support me as a writer a way of doing so, 2) a way to help both small presses who don’t get exposure of larger publishers, and myself as well as small presses can’t offer royalties like the large presses do.
What does it mean for the Blog?
- Not much, if I’m honest. I’ll add links under my signature that, if you click on them, will take you to the relevant page. If you purchase the item (i.,e., Oneclick or place it in your shopping cart and complete the purchase), I’ll get a very small percentage back. The links that are currently for places where you can find my work for “free” will continue just as they are (one of the two remaining stories under consideration is actually at a “free” publication, so if it gets accepted, I’ll add it as normal). Links for free and paid content will show up under my signature–once it gets to unwieldy, I’ll probably drop the “Archives” Section and move the links to the sidebar).
- A new page that is a curated list of things that I have on my bookshelf that I really like (books, games, movies, and other media). If any look interesting, please feel free to click on it, if not, then no worries.
- A Saturday update of the “Favorite Media” page (okay, now this is going to be hard–I try to use the weekends to brainstorm for blog ideas for the upcoming week, so I can’t promise that this is always going to happen, but I will try my best).
- And a small sentence at the bottom of posts to let readers know that I’m a part of the Associates program. Now, to be clear, I don’t work at Amazon. I’m a writer and a graduate student (for now, at least, but more on that later). But Amazon (and I) want to be clear that the links that I promote are “commercial” in nature.
And that’s it! I’m going to test out the link below for my story, “Faerie Knight” which was on the Tangent Online 2014 Recommended Reading List.
Feel free to click on the Amazon link if you choose, or not, as the case may be. Hope you have a great day! And it is back to writing for me–revising All Tomorrow’s Children so that I start submitting it over the weekend.
Sidney
- Read Skin Deep for Free at Aurora Wolf
- Read Childe Roland for Free at Electric Spec
- Read Faerie Knight in the anthology Fae, Ed. by Rhonda Parrish or the Kindle version (I earn a small commission on the purchase of this item).
OtherWorlds: A Science Fiction & Fantasy Web Journal 