Annual sponsorship Poetry Fishbowls?

Standard trade book pricing is... well whatever the retail price of the book is, it costs 1/10th of that for the publisher. That is the ideal. The publisher's wholesale is usually 50% of retail, giving them a 30-40% profit. This is how Amazon and B-N and the like can offer 30% discounts on new books -- they are only making 20% on the books and make up the loss in volume. And bc of their buying power they usually require the publisher to offer them a discount, which comes out of the publisher's cost.

So a $20 retail book should not cost the publisher more than $2.00 per book to produce. The wholesale price would be about $10, giving the publisher an $8 profit on each book. If a store can sell the book at $20 then the store makes $10. If they give a 30% discount at retail and sell the book at $14 they still make at least $4 but they may also get a volume discount from the publisher to push their profit to $5 or more per book.

Amazon has a whole circus going on with their pricing structures. I had to learn to navigate it all myself with I worked for this small publisher that focused on Classics and Ancient Near Easter texts and I was responsible for their Amazon dealings. I learned a lot at that job.

(PS there may be individual exceptions, I was just giving a very broad idea of how pricing works for book pubs in general)

Okay, how about this:

Why not give annual sponsors the opportunity to offer prompts early if they know they won't be around for a particular month's Fishbowl? Then they can still participate even though they won't be around that day.

- I like the $20 range but it would really depend on what is being offered in reward. A monthly extra post with an additional poem in it? O a post about something else? Or a monthly LJ private message with a poem in it to read just for subscribers?

- I consider that my LJ annual rate is about $24 or so and that is something I use and enjoy every day whereas the poetry, just one day a month.

- I also consider that the writer gets just as much out of the fishbowl as the reader because you have the option of taking poems you have written using our feedback and selling it to another market in some way.

Just random thoughts at the moment.

I am one of those people who contributes once in a while when I have a few dollars extra, and it's not because I love poetry that much but because I want to support my friend the writer in her attempt to feed her family and live.

But! I think it is an awesome idea, I really do. Many people do similar things. For instance, in the scrapbooking world, online classes for money are VERY popular and people make quite a nice bit of change off them. These classes vary in subject and type. There are one-time-only classes usually consisting of a PDF download with instructions, and on-going classes which usually include access to a private MB where students can chat with the teacher and work together and share progress, there are classes on digital techniques for people who want to use PhotoShop better or classes in using typography on a page, and there are classes on specific projects to make, where the person running the website also sells a kit of materials one can buy and use to make the project (aside from the cost of the class, which is the ideas themselves).

And there are people who offer some free classes in order to get people to come to their website and get used to it and like it, and then when you are there taking the free class they are then selling to these customers all their current other classes.

For instance, I have been doing the free online project Scrap Your Day through www.shimelle.com since April, and every month there is a photo prompt sheet and an album prompt sheet with a sketch for how to use the photos. To get these documents, which are offered as a free PDF download, I have to go back to this website twice a month on different days. And while I'm there she has other pages on her website which tell me what classes and other projects she has for sale right now.

I know that kind of web set up is beyond your skills but ... at some point maybe yu can look into setting up www.ElizabethBarrette.com for yourself and then you can embed your LJ into the domain as the blog area, and then have other areas where people can pay for things like downloadable PDFs of your chapbooks, and such. You might be able to write one of those serial novels with a monthly download of each chapter. You might be able to combine that with a fishbowl, like: here is this month's chapter, and I am now taking prompts for what should happen to our characters next month, and so on. You might be able to offer a really cool game for people, like an online mystery or scavenger hunt, where the clues are embedded in a series of poems....

You are already doing something very similar in offering classes at Grey School. Just thinking out loud, because as you have seen, in your situation expanding your online presence and offerings will enable you to keep doing what you're doing and still eat.