1: Is Sharing-Books.com a Non-Profit Organization?
Sharing Books is not a non-profit or a charity organization. However, we have built in the DNA or our business model “Doing Well by Doing Good”. While most companies give away a percentage of their profits, we give away a third of our revenues!

Because we are a for profit company, we submit ourselves to the discipline of the market and we are forced to be very judicious with our finances and human resources. The private market discipline also ensures that we remain relevant and deliver value to our clients.

We do not accept any government publishing grants or subsidies of any kind.

2: How are the Sharing Books chosen?
The books are not chosen. Any book creator is welcome to submit their Works for publishing on sharing-books.com. The books are accepted if they meet the Contribution Guidelines or they are rejected if they do not meet the guidelines. Our librarians do not review, edit or comment on the books. There are only two choices: accepted or rejected.

3: How do I submit a book?
Click “Publish A Book” on our home page and follow the directions. You will need three things to do an upload:

• A PDF version of your book, designed as you would wish it to be printed, at 150dpi.
• A JPG thumbnail that you wish to use to represent your book on our site, at 600 by 600 pixels.
• A text version of the text in your book, in TXT, DOC, or DOCX formats.

4: Who owns the rights of the books?
Book creators keep the ownership of the copyrights of their book. They grant a license to Sharing Books. See the Contribution Agreement that is part of the Publish A Book process for more details.

5: Why not have Sharing Books for older than 11 years old?
One of our objectives is to promote literacy. If a person is older than 11 and learning to read, they will find many of the Sharing Books interesting and that this will be a good way to attain literacy.

At 12, young people enter an age segment, which marketers define as “Tweens”, with different aspirations and interests than the target audience of Sharing Books.

We are considering the possibility of replicating the business model for other segments of the reading public.

6: I am a teacher. Can I use the books in my classroom?
Absolutely! We hope it will encourage your students to read a lot and to become book creators themselves.

7: Why did you create Sharing Books?
See The Sharing Books Story.

8: Does Sharing Books give tax receipts?
Sharing Books does not give paper or electronic tax receipts for funds donated through our site.

  9: Does the Sharing-Books team edit or correct the books submitted for spelling or grammar errors?
The Sharing-Books team does not edit or correct the books submitted.  We only provide a platform for publication.  The books have to pass the test of our volunteer librarians as to the appropriateness of content as per our Contribution Guidelines.  We control the content of the books but not the quality of the books.  This means that you may find books with incorrect spelling or grammar.  Sometimes these are genuine errors and other times they reflect local language habits like the differences between UK and US English spelling.  (In our case we elect to use for our site Canadian English spelling.)  Sharing-Books’ roles are to foster reading and to facilitate the creation and publication of new books.  We will have writers whose command of the language may not satisfy some parents or teachers.  On the other hand these spelling and grammar challenged books may provide a teaching opportunity in a “find the mistakes” way.

  10: I am an author, how and when will I make money with my books?
As the site grows we will implement several revenue generating features:

• donations by users appreciating your book
• web site advertising, these will be discrete ads placed at topic relevant pages of the site
• book advertising, these will be discrete ads like a sponsor’s ad on a theatre program
• book sponsoring, here an advertiser may request to sponsor specific books because of the relevancy of the topic for their operations
• Affiliate programs like printing of one off books or other materials featuring characters of your book
• Licensing, this site is the opportunity for your book to be discovered by the public and by the movie, video-gaming, toy and traditional publishing industry.

These features are being developed and added as completed. 

Royalty cheques over $50 CAN will be issued monthly and mailed to your address.  Amounts under $50 will be rolled over the following month.

  11: What are Sharing-Books Classics and why do you publish them?
Sharing-Books Classics are over 100 years old out of copyrights children’s books that we believe will be of interest to you. One of our colleagues has researched children’s books history and world libraries to scout for out of print, rare or simply interesting books. Some of the Sharing-Books Classics come from our private collections or we acquire the books before scanning them.

We remember our grandparents reading their favourite books to us and we want to make it easy for today’s kids to share the same moments with their grandparents (or more and more with their great grandparents). Finding old books is often difficult. We want children to ask “What was your favourite book?” and to be able to quickly find it here.

Our primary focus is to find new book creators and to give them a platform that will validate their efforts. We will add only a limited number of Sharing-Books Classics to make sure we do not overwhelm the new books.

We also believe that the Sharing-Books Classics will stimulate the imagination of inventive authors. We imagine that some of the Classics will be re-written or re-illustrated by some of our creators, a little bit like mash-ups in music. Anyone ready to give a hand held GPS to Hansel & Gretel?

12: If I put my work on Sharing-Books, does that mean I can't sell my original art?
No, you still are able to sell your original artwork. When you contribute your work to Sharing-Books you are agreeing to a world wide transferable license. You are agreeing to allow Sharing-Books the exclusive license to distribute your work over the Internet and you are agreeing to cooperate with Sharing-Books for commercial opportunities beyond the internet.  This answer aims to explain the Contribution Agreement and does not supersede it.  Refer to section 6 and 7 of the Terms of Contribution for the exact wording.

13: If I put my work on Sharing-Books, can I have it on my website?
Yes, you can have your work on your website. If you offered it on your web site before uploading it on Sharing-Books, you continue as before.  If you plan to build a web site and add books already on Sharing-Books to your web site, you need our permission “which consent will not be unreasonably withheld” as per the Terms of Contribution.  This answer aims to explain the Contribution Agreement and does not supersede it.  Refer to section 6 and 7 of the Terms of Contribution for the exact wording.

14: Can I sell my work on other websites?
Yes, our goal is to make your work visible so that you can get as much revenue as possible from your work.  We simply ask to cooperate together in the marketing of your works and our fee is 10% of what the author gets.  This answer aims to explain the Contribution Agreement and does not supersede it.  Refer to section 6 and 7 of the Terms of Contribution for the exact wording.