Why on earth would you expect authors to hand over all royalties to you?
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In a recent post I asked for opinions on a new promotion idea. In short, the idea is this: promote authors for free by putting several novels together into an anthology. My fee as well as other advertising expenses would be paid for by royalties. In order to maximize how much money is available to promote the authors and their books, the obvious side effect is that authors wouldn't receive any royalties from the anthology.
Read my response HERE to this poll comment: "Most compilers take 10% plus expenses...you're taking 100."
Here's what one pollster said about my idea—
Why on earth would
you expect authors
to hand over all
royalties to you?
(AKA the name of this post)
Unlike the guy pictured above, I do have pretty good reasons why authors would be willing to do this, and asking people to fill out the poll will either confirm my suspicions or encourage me to take my idea back to the drawing board—small tweaks or big tweaks yet to be seen.
Here's Why I Think Authors Will Love This Idea
First of all, I realize I have an uphill battle with many authors, but I think once authors understand what I'm trying to do, they will jump on board faster than I can take them.
Reason #1 - It's free promotion
Who doesn't like to get something for free? Free promotion on this site. Free promotion via Masquerade Tours. And with enough funds, free promotion via third-party blog tours.
As long as we are making money, in fact, the promotion will continue.
Authors pay me to promote them now. Why wouldn't they be willing to "possibly" forego royalties to get endless promotion for free?
I say possibly because...
Reason #2 - The author's normal sales continue uninterrupted, possibly even increase.
I don't ask the author's book to be taken down or anything like that. I don't ask for exclusivity. They can continue to sale their book apart from me.
If I do hurt their sales a bit...first of all, if that's true, I've got more reach that I think I do. Second, if it does happen, just imagine how many more people will see their work. The author's normal sales of other books will most likely increase.
If not, no harm done.
Reason #3 - Exposure! Exposure! Exposure!
The real power of this idea is the collective nature (kind of like Cover Wars). By multiple authors getting together to promote each other, we'll be able to raise enough funds to pay for third-party blog tours. The more we raise, the more money we can spend on more blog tours or a more expensive one.
And the whole idea surrounding blog tours is to extend exposure for an author.
Masquerade MegaPacks will extend the already awesome exposure we bring ... many times over.
FOR FREE!
Oh, and the pollster mentioned earlier must think my time isn't worth much. Yes, I make money promoting authors, and yes, I would like to make more. It's not that I'm greedy. It's that I would like my wife to work from home with me. We don't quite make enough to do that yet.
I want to do that while doing more for authors. If this idea is as great as I think it is, I'll be able to do a lot more and hopefully be paid to do so ... without ever asking a dime from an author. How cool would that be?
To voice your opinion with our poll, see this post. Let us know if this idea is STUPID, and I will sedate it for you. (hopefully to revive it later) See, I wasn't calling the pollster stupid at all. 
