Author Income Streams, 13 of 15: Partnerships

Sharon Woodhouse
6 min readJun 8, 2024
Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash.

This is a super fun, catchall category of author income: Partnerships. It refers to any kind of special arrangement you have with other individuals or businesses that provide income. This could mean referral fees, affiliate marketing, ads or coupons inside your book/s, ad revenue sharing, sponsorships, or monetization of social media and influencing activities.

Looking at the samples, you can see the variety. Figure out if any of these can work for your books and author business. They can be roughly grouped as offline partnerships, online partnerships, and referrals.

Offline Partnerships

Offline partnerships can be centered in your book/s or out in the world.

Product Placements, Sponsorships, Ads, and Coupons

Book-centered partnership income may come from ads or coupons in a book, product placement, and/or sponsorships.

Consider if options like these examples can be adapted for your books or business model:

  • A travel author includes coupons in the back of her books from sponsors like museums or restaurants.
  • A romance novelist sets her books in picturesque inns that pay her a fee for product placement (mentioning and describing the locale in…

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Sharon Woodhouse

Sharon Woodhouse is an author coach, publishing consultant, publishing project manager, and former indie book publisher. www.conspirecreative.com/subscribe