If I rated something "ok" at Fictionwise, I'd consider it to be not a waste of my money, but not an incentive to buy another book from that author. So a few people rating one of mine ok isn't a problem, but if a lot of people were, that would be worrying.
I don't know how the ARE contract works (and should probably go and see if they have anything on the public site), but this is what the public information at Fictionwise says:
"Publisher royalty is fifty percent (50%) of the Sale Price or twenty-five percent (25%) of the List Price, whichever is greater."
So no matter what the sale price is, FW will always pass on at least 25% of the list price (which is essentially whatever the publisher tells them is standard cover price for the title) to the publisher, unless there's some odd deal going on. My contract with LI says I get half of whatever they get from FW, which as you can see from the bit I quoted runs anywhere between a quarter and a half of the list price, depending on what discounts FW are offering. If someone buys one of my titles with a micropay rebate they've earned on someone else's book, I should still get some money for it.
What you will see occasionally is a bunch of titles offered as free downloads at FW. I know that these often involve the publisher and/or author agreeing to give the books away without royalty payments in order to get publicity of some sort. In particular, it's very common for sf authors to offer their short stories which have been nominated for the Hugo awards, so that potential voters have the chance to read them if they missed the stories when they were originally published in magazines.
Loose Id do send books out for review, but not to all review sites. I don't know if Rainbow Reviews is on their radar or not. I send out some review copies as well, but I mostly do so to review sites that I read moderately often myself, and I don't read Rainbow Reviews -- no particular reason other than there are a lot of sites out there and I've already got more on my feed than I can handle.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Re: Damned by faint praise
Date: 2008-12-18 08:48 pm (UTC)I don't know how the ARE contract works (and should probably go and see if they have anything on the public site), but this is what the public information at Fictionwise says:
"Publisher royalty is fifty percent (50%) of the Sale Price or twenty-five percent (25%) of the List Price, whichever is greater."
So no matter what the sale price is, FW will always pass on at least 25% of the list price (which is essentially whatever the publisher tells them is standard cover price for the title) to the publisher, unless there's some odd deal going on. My contract with LI says I get half of whatever they get from FW, which as you can see from the bit I quoted runs anywhere between a quarter and a half of the list price, depending on what discounts FW are offering. If someone buys one of my titles with a micropay rebate they've earned on someone else's book, I should still get some money for it.
What you will see occasionally is a bunch of titles offered as free downloads at FW. I know that these often involve the publisher and/or author agreeing to give the books away without royalty payments in order to get publicity of some sort. In particular, it's very common for sf authors to offer their short stories which have been nominated for the Hugo awards, so that potential voters have the chance to read them if they missed the stories when they were originally published in magazines.
Loose Id do send books out for review, but not to all review sites. I don't know if Rainbow Reviews is on their radar or not. I send out some review copies as well, but I mostly do so to review sites that I read moderately often myself, and I don't read Rainbow Reviews -- no particular reason other than there are a lot of sites out there and I've already got more on my feed than I can handle.