Affiliate Program Terms

About This Agreement

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

The Short Version

• A one-time bounty for every paid subscription you bring in — $15 for a Basic-plan subscriber, $25 for a Pro-plan subscriber, rising to $25 / $40 once you reach Elite creator status. No recurring percentage, no duration window: you’re paid once per conversion.
• Personalized discount code (e.g. JANE15) issued to every approved affiliate — your audience gets 15% off their first 3 months when they use it at checkout, and the redemption credits the conversion to you.
• 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 pay a flat one-time bounty rather than a recurring percentage because it’s simpler to reason about and pays out fast — your earnings land within a payout cycle of the conversion clearing our refund window, instead of dribbling out over months. If we raise the bounty amounts later, current affiliates earn the better rate on conversions going forward.

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.com 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

1. Apply through the form at bookshaper.com/affiliates.
2. We review your audience and approve within 5 business days.
3. You get a personalized discount code on approval (15% off the customer’s first 3 months).
4. Customers who use your code at Stripe Checkout are credited to you — attribution happens at coupon redemption, with no cookie or browser dependency.
5. You earn a one-time bounty for each paid conversion — $15 (Basic plan) or $25 (Pro plan), rising to $25 / $40 once you reach Elite creator status.
6. We pay out monthly on the 15th for the prior month’s approved earnings, once you’ve crossed $50 in earned bounties.

Commission Structure

Bookshaper pays a flat, one-time bounty per paid conversion — not a recurring percentage. The amount depends on which plan the referred customer subscribes to and your creator tier:

• Elite creator status is unlocked once you drive 10 or more paid conversions within a rolling 90-day window. Once unlocked it’s permanent — the higher bounty applies to every conversion from that point forward and does not drop back if your 90-day volume later dips.
• Counted equally: a monthly or an annual subscription on the same plan earns the same bounty — a conversion is a conversion.
• A “paid conversion” is a referred customer who starts a paid Bookshaper subscription using your code and is still active at the end of the 30-day hold period (see Payouts).
• Does not apply to: one-time purchases, free trials that never convert to paid, subscriptions refunded or canceled within the hold period, and chargebacks.
• Plan changes: the bounty is set by the plan the customer is on when the conversion clears the hold period. A customer who upgrades from Base to Pro within that window earns the Pro bounty; an upgrade after the bounty has already paid does not earn an additional bounty.

Comped Subscription

Every approved affiliate gets a free Bookshaper subscription — comped the moment you’re approved, with no credit card and no obligation to start promoting right away.

• Stays free while you’re an active affiliate. A single tracked conversion from your code in any rolling 12-month window keeps the comp going — no minimum cadence and no quotas.
• Lapses only after a full year of zero conversions. If 12 months pass with no conversions on your account, we’ll email you a warning roughly one month before the comp ends, giving you a window to drive a conversion or step away.
• Your work is always yours. If the comp lapses you keep everything you’ve created; you simply resume the regular subscription rate on your next renewal.

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 a bounty. 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: each bounty is held for 30 days after the customer’s initial charge — covering our refund window — and becomes payable only if the subscription is still active and unrefunded at the end of that window.
• 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 bounty for that conversion is reversed — in practice it simply never becomes payable, since the hold period covers exactly this window.
• If a referred customer charges back or their subscription is canceled for fraud, the bounty 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 bounties 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.com from your end; we’ll send to the address on file from ours). Pending legitimate bounties 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 conversions after the effective date. Bounties already earned on prior conversions are unaffected.
• If a modification increases bounty amounts, current affiliates earn the more favorable rate on conversions going forward 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 bounties earned on legitimate conversions in the current month are still paid out on the next cycle. Clawed-back bounties from fraud or refund events are not.

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

Contact

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

Related Documents

• Affiliate Program Overview
• Bookshaper Terms of Service
• Privacy Policy