May 27 2008
The Bookhabit Pyramid Scheme
I know quite a few of my regular readers are aspiring writers and as such, are writing or have written books of their own. In light of this, I think a few of you may find Dee’s post on Bookhabit and its ‘financial model’ interesting. Specifically this excerpt:
Bookhabit’s author pay-out model is deliberately structured to keep most of those royalties within the site itself. When signing up, you the author agrees that Bookhabit doesn’t have to pay you until you’ve earned a stored total of $50 in revenue. [..] Bookhabit, in fact, encourages its authors to use their pre-$50 revenue to buy other books from the site. In other words, the whole place is essentially set up like one big pyramid scheme with Bookhabit itself the only one ever really making any money.
Hopefully you’ll be able to use the post, and the comments in response to it, to figure out if it’s somewhere you’d like your own book(s) promoted/sold.
Warning
This post is over 6 months old. This means that, despite my best intentions, it may no longer be accurate. Age, motherhood, experience, loss... these things have all changed me from when this blog was started back in the heady (ha) days of my youth.
As much as I would like to go back and edit 10 years of archives to provide an insight into the 'me' of now — to update coding snippets and revise website advice — it would probably take years to do so (by which point I'd have to start again!) This would defeat the point of keeping these archives anyway.
Please take these posts for what they are: a brief look into my past, my history, my journey.
17 Responses so far
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Pssst, “the bookhabit and it is ‘financial model’”? ;)
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Interesting, I think a lot of people will like the idea of a site that sells your books (or promotes them) because it’s so hard to find a publisher interested enough to do it. But if you take a closer look, it might just be not such a good idea…
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stfu Amelie :p
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I guess it depends on how badly you want to get your stuff out there. If you really, really want your stuff out in the public, and don’t care that you’ll be making essentially nothing and the only way you’ll [[probably, haven't read the full agreement]] ever get rights to your work back is through a very very good lawyer… then hey, I guess it’s for you. As ridiculous as it may seem, some people are so hellbent on getting themselves out there they’d do just about anything. The same thing happens to new artists in the music business. It’s ridiculous.
And completely unrelated, and I’m probably the only one who doesn’t know this already, but I was so unaware that the comment box could be made bigger by dragging the lower right-hand corner. Must be a wordpress thing. Awesome.
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@Stephanie: I’m thinking more likely a browser or extension thing because I can’t do that? o.O What are you running?
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^ It’s a Safari thing ;)
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Feckin’ mac users, get off with ya! Littering up my blog..
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I forget about you silly Windows users, sorry :)
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And would you really turn out me from your blog? An old friend? Aw.
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Don’t be silly, you’re one of my top commenters :p
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That’s because I’ve known you/of you since like the beginning of time, haha.
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Yeah, you’re like a loyal dog. Somewhat smelly, possibly quite hairy, but otherwise nice enough. ;)
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Regarding textareas, you can also use extensions for Firefox. I have it and I’m in love with it. *resizes textareas all over Jem’s site*
So, Jem, when are you publishing a novel? :P
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I’m not publishing anything, it’s hard enough coming up with
crapcontent for my blog! -
I don’t smell bad! Last I checked, people can’t smell across the pond.
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Let me finish my book before I get excited at the thought of publishing it. :)
V xx
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Yes, because we teenagers are searching out possibilities for publication every day.
…actually, we are. Or me, at least. Me. Thanks, Jem.
