There is a minimum payment threshold of $50.00. If a writer's earnings are less than $50, the amount earned gets added to the next month's earnings until the threshold is passed, in which case a payment will be made.
Yeah, I was contacted via Twitter. As I told the nice lady, I've never considered serials and I thought their (I'm not sure covers is the right word) were pretty decent. Not sure if the site provides those. I can't afford even the 4.99 right now, so I can't judge any quality. I was interested in what this community thought of them.
You do not need to have a Channillo membership to apply, but you will be required to get one before you can begin your series. Writers are expected to read other series (as time permits), and are encouraged to connect with, support, and promote other Channillo writers whose work they enjoy.
I did a search, but didn't find anything. Has anyone heard of Channillo.com. It's a web-based serial publisher.
Of course, Chanillo charges the authors $5/mth as a condition of acceptance so I expect the business side there is doing just fine, or at least well enough to cover expenses. The authors lose, but that's to be expected when your business model is basically the cyber equivalent of PublishAmerica: buy your own book.
I was going from mrsmig's quote above. That's the PublishAmerica black flag right there: "Do it for your fellow authors!" But there's nothing in that set-up for authors, and nothing for readers. It's all about covering basic overhead. Looked at that way, providing your own covers and editing fits right in. This publisher doesn't have costs. They just pay the domain upkeep.
I'm glad you haven't been charged, though. At least they seem flexible on that. I suppose if one had a piece that was basically a throwaway then there probably is a community of people there willing to read it, and maybe they promote enough to have a small inbound audience. You probably still get more readership on a SYW post.
But -- have you been paying (a minimum of) $4.99 a month for your membership?from what I'm aware of I haven't been charged $5. so I'm not really sure how accurate that is. Maybe other authors are charged if they want to subscribe to other stories on there. But I have never been charged any money from the website to publish my story or anything like that.
But -- have you been paying (a minimum of) $4.99 a month for your membership?
I did publish on Channillo but took my story down. Another prospective Channillo writer contacted me through my FB page and this is what I wrote to her:
"I'm sorry to say that I've soured on Channillo. It looked promising but after a couple weeks there I realized that the site owner is doing no promotion on her site. The site is not optimized for SEO and has no Google page rank. This shocked me. So there is no way any traffic is coming to Channillo through the web.
I spent a good deal of effort trying to drum up business for subscriptions. The irony is I used to work in the newspaper circulation business for twenty years so if there is anyone who can sell subscriptions it is me. But it doesn't help if people don't know you are there and if your website looks dark to the web crawler bots. (Additional note: people I sent to the site said they couldn't find my story, which probably means there is no site map which makes searches of the material more difficult than necessary.)
That didn't bother me so much until I wrote her and offered my services gratis so Channillo could gather a web presence. I have nine years experience building page rank and web presence through a number of different blogs so I do know a couple things. She was too busy to talk to me.
It appears that the only way authors make money is off other authors on the site. We all have to buy a monthly subscription and it appears that money is the pool from which everyone else is paid and that's not a lot.
She does say you are expected to network with other authors. I take this to mean that she does expect us to subscribe to other authors books and the ones that network the most get the lions share of the money. She may not realize it but is seems what she created was a ponzi scheme.
Earnings works out to less than a dollar per subscriber per month. And she only pays out when you earn fifty dollars. At the rate I was going it would have taken me a year to make $50 and I would have spent $65 to earn that money. So it is not a good deal for me." (Additional note: the $3.65 I "earned" was not paid to me upon severance.)
When I wrote and asked for the story to be taken down, I also listed the problems I saw with the site. She didn't bat an eye, just took the story down and kept my "earnings," as well as the membership fees I paid. So I take this to mean she is well aware of what she is doing. And in my mind, it's just not ethical.
I advise to stay away from Channillo. Once you put your story up on her site you've lost your "first publication rights," and many publishers would not want to buy your story, no matter how good it is. In my case, I only wrote the story as a promotion for the other, larger works of my series, so instead of Channillo I've placed it on my blog for free. And that's okay. Better that than lose money.
Ponzi Scheme was my first thought as well. Glad you haven't been ripped off too badly, Panda, but it's still not ethical of the pub.