The first two charities for “The Military Guide” royalties

The contributor’s votes are in!

The majority chose:
Wounded Warrior Project and
Fisher House.

Here are the other candidates nominated by the book’s 50+ contributors:
Wounded Warrior Wives of Operation Homefront,
Special Operations Warrior Foundation,
Homes For Our Troops,
Semper Fi Fund,
Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund,
National Military Family Association,
Armed Services YMCA,
VFW, and
DAV.

Now all we have to do is wait for those big royalty payments to roll in, right? Well, not so fast.  Sales are just getting started.

“The Military Guide” is in stock and shipping and the pocket guide will be back from the printers any day now. We don’t have real-time sales data yet but National Book Network is sucking up the books as fast as Impact Publications can get them out the door. I hope to start getting sales numbers next month, and I’ll update them on the blog.

The contract with Impact Publications (which is quite generous by industry standards!) says that royalty payments are made in December and June. A payment only goes out if the last six months’ royalties add up to at least $135. The good news is that the contract’s fine print implies that the December 2011 payment will be sent if there are final sales of at least 100 copies by the end of October. I suspect that’s achievable.

Instead of waiting until December to decide how to allocate the royalties, we decided to announce our choices now. My next step is sending copies of the book to the development staffs of Wounded Warrior and Fisher House. If they like what they see, they could suggest to their corporate sponsors that they buy copies to donate to their beneficiaries. We’d donate the royalties back to the charity. I’d use that “good news” achievement in media interviews, and hopefully we’d sell even more books. It’s one way to start a viral marketing campaign.

The royalties are a percentage of how much you pay for the book & pocket guide, but the volume scales quickly. Of course I’d rather sell 100 books @ $10.77 each than “just” 10 books @ $13.46. If you’re interested in multiple copies (for your troops or your friends or libraries!) then contact me for Ron Krannich‘s personal e-mail at Impact Publications. He’ll give you a good discount.

If any of you blog readers work for Wounded Warrior or Fisher House, or if you know who I should contact, please pass me the info. Otherwise I’m just working from their websites.

Would you like to help choose the book’s military charities? I’m collecting advice and stories for the second edition now!

Related articles:
More military charities for “The Military Guide” royalties
Military charities blog page
Help choose the military charities receiving donations from “The Military Guide” sales

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