by Jay Hartman
Many years ago when we first started out, one of our authors experienced a horrible situation where her home caught fire. With so much loss, we decided to donate all the net proceeds from the sales of the author’s title directly to her. It may not have added up to a ton of money, but every little bit helped her get back on her feet.
Since then we’ve published numerous other works with a charitable component to them. The Beat of Black Wings has a portion of proceeds go to The Brain Aneurysm Foundation. Only the Good Die Young benefits The Billy Joel Foundation. We launched a new initiative around our title, Happiness is Listening to Your Dog Snore, which enables rescue organizations around the world to earn money from every paperback copy sold through our site. They can also purchase copies at a discount for their own fundraising efforts.
Charitable causes in publishing are certainly nothing new. The publishing industry always tried to find ways to give back. Plus creative folks, such as authors, tend to have really big hearts. It’s one of the reasons I love this industry.
Adding a charitable component to your publishing accomplishes several different but important goals:
- A worthwhile cause will benefit from your efforts. Pick a cause you’re passionate about or that has close ties to the subject matter of the book.
- Readers will feel they’re making a difference by making a purchase.
- A charity component widens your audience for the book. If you wrote a dog mystery, now your audience isn’t just people who love dog mysteries. Promote to rescue operations, groomers, pet stores, and more and indicate you’re supporting a dog-related cause. People who may not normally read a dog mystery might pick it up if they know their favorite charity benefits.
- Charitable donations are a tax deduction depending on the amount (and, of course, in which country you live). Sometimes deductible donations help offset other author expenses.
Important things to keep in mind if you choose to pursue a charity component to your work:
- Price your titles so you have room in your margin to donate funds, cover expenses, and to keep some for yourself (profit). Of course, if you choose to make 100% of your revenue the donation that’s totally okay, make sure you’re able to cover expenses, such as printing, accounting, etc.
- Keep your charity recipient broad or malleable. Maybe change the recipient every couple of months. Allow readers to vote on your webpage for which charity should receive the donations for a specific period of time. Market to multiple audiences and your title won’t get stale. Readers love to engage in voting for causes to receive funds.
- Sell from your own site if possible. If you don’t need to pay a middleman a percentage; that means more in your pot to donate. It becomes a lot easier to measure how much money you collected and to see if your efforts produce the type of results you hoped for. You’ll get a better idea as to whether or not the charities you’re marketing to are the ones that generated the sales or if the title sells for other reasons.
Giving back is a terrific feeling, and if you find yourself able to introduce a charity component to your publishing efforts, you’ll experience the feeling yourself. Remember: charity starts at home! Like putting on an oxygen mask on an airplane in case of a sudden change of cabin pressure, you need to make sure you have yourself covered before you attempt to help your neighbor. If you believe it’s within your means, jump in and see all the good your writing accomplishes.
Looking to get The Publisher Perspective? Send your questions to jhartman@untreedreads.com with TPP in your subject line. If your question is used, we’ll send you a free ebook from Untreed Reads.
Jay A. Hartman, editor-in-chief at Untreed Reads Publishing, founded Untreed Reads to promote ebooks with an emphasis on independent authors and publishers. He’s written about the ebook industry for fifteen years and previously served as content editor for KnowBetter.com, one of the internet’s oldest sites reporting on ebooks and epublishing.
