Affiliate Program Terms

Last updated: May 2, 2026.

About This Agreement

The Bookshaper affiliate program is operated by Bullish Bear Ventures LLC, a Texas limited liability company doing business as “Bookshaper”. Throughout this document, “Bookshaper”, “we”, “us”, and “our” refer to that entity. By joining the program, you agree to these Terms.

The Short Version

30% commission on every subscription you bring in, for the first 6 months of each customer’s active subscription — up to 40% once you cross our Pro tier threshold.
Personalized discount code issued on approval — customers who use your code at Stripe Checkout are credited to you. No cookie or browser dependency.
Monthly payouts via PayPal or Wise once you’ve earned $50 or more.
Apply to join — not self-serve. We approve creators whose audience overlaps with authors and self-publishers.

We keep commission payable for 6 months (rather than 12) because we’re early and want to learn our churn before making longer commitments. Once we have stable retention data, we plan to extend the window — current affiliates will be grandfathered into any more generous future terms.

Eligibility

At launch, the Bookshaper affiliate program is open to US-based creators only. International applications are paused while we set up cross-border tax and disclosure compliance — we’re committed to opening internationally and will email our notify list when we do. Email affiliates@bookshaper.ai to be added.

Who This Is For

Bookshaper’s affiliate program is for creators who serve fiction authors and self-publishers:

YouTubers who review writing tools or cover the craft of novel writing
Podcasters whose audience is writers, indie publishers, or authors building a career
Newsletter and Substack writers with an author/publishing readership
Authors with an engaged audience (blog, social, email list) who use Bookshaper themselves

We don’t accept affiliates from generic deal/coupon sites, cashback networks, or audiences with no author focus.

How It Works

Apply through the form at bookshaper.ai/affiliates.
We review your audience and approve within 5 business days.
You get a personalized discount code on approval.
Customers who use your code at Stripe Checkout are credited to you — attribution happens at code redemption, with no cookie or browser dependency.
You earn 30% of their subscription revenue for 6 months — and 40% on all conversions going forward once you hit the Pro tier.
We pay out monthly on the 15th for the prior month’s approved earnings, once you’ve crossed $50 in earned commission.

Commission Structure

Standard rate: 30% of net subscription revenue (after Stripe fees, before taxes).
Pro tier rate: 40% of net subscription revenue, unlocked once you drive 10 or more paid conversions within a rolling 90-day window. The higher rate applies to all conversions from that point forward and stays in place as long as you sustain the threshold; if your 90-day count drops below 10, you return to the standard rate on future conversions only (previously-earned commissions are unaffected).
Duration: 6 months from the customer’s first paid billing cycle, at both tiers.
Applies to: monthly and annual Bookshaper subscriptions.
Does not apply to: one-time purchases, trials that never convert, refunded subscriptions, chargebacks, credits or promotional periods where no revenue is collected.
Upgrades and downgrades: commission follows the new subscription amount from the next billing cycle onward.

Commission is calculated on net revenue received by Bookshaper — if a customer pays $5.99/month, the commission is 30% (or 40% at Pro tier) of what we actually collect after Stripe’s processing fees, not the gross price.

Attribution Policy

Attribution model: discount code redemption at Stripe Checkout. Every approved affiliate receives a personalized promo code; when a customer enters that code at checkout, the conversion is attributed to the affiliate who owns it.
No cookie or browser dependency. Attribution doesn’t rely on what device the customer uses, what browser they have open, or whether they’ve cleared cookies. The code is the only signal needed.
First-redemption wins. A given customer can only redeem one promo code per Stripe subscription. If they redeem your code, you’re credited; subsequent codes don’t re-attribute the same customer.
Self-referrals (using your own code on your own subscription) are not eligible for commission. Bookshaper detects these via email match and reverses them.

Payouts

Threshold: $50 USD minimum balance before payout.
Schedule: monthly, processed on the 15th of each month for the prior calendar month’s approved earnings.
Holding period: commissions are held for 30 days after the initial customer charge to cover our refund window before being marked payable.
Methods: PayPal or Wise. Both are handled through our affiliate platform — you’ll enter your payout details there, not with us.
Currency: payouts are in USD. Currency conversion is handled by PayPal/Wise at their rates.
Taxes: affiliates are responsible for their own taxes. As a US-only program at launch, affiliates earning $600 or more in a calendar year will receive a Form 1099-NEC. We may request a W-9 before your first payout so we can issue the 1099 correctly.

Refunds, Chargebacks & Clawbacks

If a referred customer refunds within Bookshaper’s 30-day refund window, the commission for that customer is reversed.
If a referred customer charges back or their subscription is canceled for fraud, commission is reversed and may be clawed back from future payouts.
If a clawback exceeds your current balance, the negative balance is cleared from your next month’s earnings.

What You Can Do

Share your personalized discount code in videos, newsletters, podcast descriptions, blog posts, or social.
Create honest reviews, comparisons, tutorials, and recommendations featuring Bookshaper.
Use the assets we provide (screenshots, logos, demo videos) or create your own.

What You Can’t Do

Bid on our brand in paid search. You may not run Google, Bing, or other paid search ads on “Bookshaper,” misspellings, or close variants. This includes display URLs.
Run ads that impersonate Bookshaper. No ads that appear to come from us, use our logo as the advertiser, or claim to be the official product.
Incentivize signups. No paying users to redeem your code, no promising rewards in exchange for subscribing.
Spam. No mass email, forum spam, comment spam, or unsolicited DMs promoting your code.
Post on coupon/cashback sites. RetailMeNot, Honey, Rakuten, and similar are not allowed unless we explicitly approve a partnership.
Misrepresent the product. Don’t claim features we don’t have, pricing that isn’t current, or guarantees we don’t offer.
Share your code with people who’d buy anyway. Giving your code to friends or family who were already going to subscribe — to manufacture commissions on conversions that would have happened without your audience — is grounds for clawback and termination.

FTC Disclosure Requirement

The FTC’s Endorsement Guides (16 C.F.R. Part 255) require you to disclose your material connection to Bookshaper any time you endorse, recommend, or promote the product. The disclosure rules below are taken from the FTC’s published guidance for influencers; following them is a condition of participating in the program.

Required: clear and conspicuous

Disclose your relationship to Bookshaper clearly and conspicuously in any post, video, livestream, or description that endorses or recommends the product.
Use simple, direct language an ordinary reader will understand. Acceptable examples: “Bookshaper sponsored this video,” “This post contains an affiliate link,” or “#ad” / “#sponsored.”
Place the disclosure where it can be easily noticed. For long written posts, place it near the top — not in a footer or after a “Read more” cut.
If your endorsement is in a picture, video, or livestream, the disclosure must be in the picture, video, or stream itself — not only in the caption.
On video, the disclosure should appear long enough for viewers to read it. If your video has voice-over endorsements, disclose verbally too.

Not acceptable

Vague or coded language — “thanks,” “collab,” “sp,” “spon,” or “ambassador” alone do not satisfy the rules.
Disclosures buried in hashtags. “#ad” placed at the end of a long string of unrelated hashtags is not clear and conspicuous.
Disclosures behind a click. Don’t rely on a link, a tooltip, or a separate page to convey the relationship.
Misrepresenting the product. Don’t claim features Bookshaper doesn’t have, pricing that isn’t current, or guarantees Bookshaper hasn’t made.

The full FTC guidance for influencers is published at ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/disclosures-101-social-media-influencers. If a post of yours is missing a required disclosure, we may ask you to add or correct it; repeated or willful non-disclosure is grounds for termination per the Termination section below.

Term, Renewal & Changes

Month-to-month term. Your participation in the program is on a month-to-month basis. Each month auto-renews unless either party terminates per the Termination section.
Either party may terminate with 7 days’ written notice via email (affiliates@bookshaper.ai from your end; we’ll send to the address on file from ours). Pending legitimate commissions remain payable on the next payout cycle. See the Termination section for cause-based termination, which is immediate.
We may modify these Terms with 30 days’ notice via email to active affiliates. Continued promotion of Bookshaper after the effective date constitutes your acceptance of the modified Terms. If you do not accept the modifications, terminate your participation before the effective date.
Modifications apply to new conversions after the effective date. Customers already referred under prior terms continue to pay commission under the terms in effect when they subscribed.
If a modification increases commission rates or extends the payout window, current affiliates are automatically moved to the more favorable terms without action required.

Termination

Bookshaper may terminate an affiliate’s participation at any time for:

Violating the “What You Can’t Do” list.
Promoting Bookshaper in a way that damages the brand (false claims, offensive content, association with unrelated harmful content).
Extended inactivity (12+ months with zero conversions on your code).
Fraud of any kind.

On termination, any commission earned on legitimate conversions in the current month is still paid out on the next cycle. Clawed-back commissions from fraud or refund events are not.

Affiliates may leave the program at any time. Pending legitimate commissions remain payable.

Contact

Questions about the program, payout issues, or edge cases: affiliates@bookshaper.ai.