Write for us!

Do you love writing short fiction stories? Then take a look at what Fiction Mail has to offer writers!

What is Fiction Mail?

Put simply, Fiction Mail is great fiction written as letters. We sell these as series of letters (both 8-letter series, 4-letter series, and 1-letter singles).

When someone buys a series, they get one letter in the mail every week for the duration of the series (other than the 1-letter single, which is just one letter!). These are physical letters that use the recipient’s name in them, are dated, and use our custom handwriting font that’s super realistic.

All the letters in a series tell one story from the letter writer’s point of view. As the weeks unfold, each letter builds on the previous weeks’ letters.

Seeking Justice Series of Fiction Mail

For example, in the Seeking Justice Series, the recipient will receive one letter a week for 8 weeks from their fictional friend Jen. Jen’s neighbor was murdered and remains at large. Through her 8 letters, she takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride while trying to catch the killer.

What’s in it for writers?

We’re looking to expand our current slate of Fiction Mail series, and we want to bring in great writers to do that.

We’re offering writers payment in two forms:

  • A commission for each sale of your series of letters
  • An affiliate fee on all sales you drive to our site (this can be sales of your own series, or other authors’ series)

How much can I earn?

We have 3 types of series you can write: 8-letter series, 4-letter series, 1-letter singles.

The commission for each is below:

  • 8-letter series: $5.00 commission
  • 4-letter series: $2.50 commission
  • 1-letter single: $0.75 commission

In addition, you will receive an affiliate fee on any sales that are referred by you (all you have to do is sign up for our affiliate program and share the affiliate links – you will only earn affiliate fees for sales generated by traffic brought to Fiction Mail using your affiliate links). We pay a 10% affiliate fee. Here’s a breakdown of the affiliate commissions:

  • 8-letter series: $25.00 sale price X 10% = $2.50 affiliate fee
  • 4-letter series: $15.00 sale price X 10% = $1.50 affiliate fee
  • 1-letter single: $5.00 sale price X 10% = $0.50 affiliate fee

Remember, you will earn affiliate commissions on ANY purchases the people you refer make, regardless of whether they buy your series or another author’s.

In total, if you refer someone using your affiliate link and they buy your series, here is what you will earn for the sale:

  • 8-letter series: $5.00 commission + $2.50 affiliate fee = $7.50
  • 4-letter series: $2.50 commission + $1.50 affiliate fee = $4.00
  • 1-letter single: $0.75 commission + 0.50 affiliate fee = $1.25

Note: affiliate fees are not paid on shipping charges or tax. Also, if the customer uses a discount code, the affiliate fee paid will be based on the discounted price the customer paid. You will ALWAYS receive the full commission.

We pay out commissions and affiliate fees monthly. Payments are made via PayPal within 3 business days after the end of the month.

How do I submit a letter series to Fiction Mail?

Now that we’ve discussed how much you can earn in commissions and affiliate fees, let’s turn to what’s needed to write for Fiction Mail.

Because we don’t want to waste anyone’s time and hard work, we broke down the submission process into three steps:

  • Submit a pitch: in this step you will provide a brief (200 words or less) overview of the story you want to tell with your letters. You’ll also let us know what length series you plan on writing (8-letter, 4-letter, or 1-letter). We’ll review your pitch and let you know if it’s a good fit for our site. If it is, you can move on to Step 2. Submit a pitch now.
  • Submit the first letter: if you’re writing an 8-letter or 4-letter series, you’ll submit just the first letter in the series. We’ll review it to make sure it meets the criteria (read on to see the criteria). If it does meet the criteria, you can move on to Step 3. If it does not meet the criteria, you can rewrite it and resubmit.
  • Submit remaining letters: now it’s time to write and submit the remaining letters in the series. After submission, if there are any issues other than light proofreading changes needed, we’ll send it back to you with specific requests.

What are the criteria for Fiction Mail

We want to give the writers the freedom to be creative. But due to the unique structure of Fiction Mail, we have a few criteria:

  • Each letter in the series must be between 1800 and 2100 words. We aim for each letter to be 6 pages using our custom font, and this is the ideal range to hit that goal.
  • Write as if you’re sending a letter to an old friend
  • Since customers receive one letter per week, each letter should be set 1 week after the previous letter and continue the storyline.
  • The final letter should tie up all loose ends.
  • Since the letters are personalized, use the recipient’s name at least 3 times in each letter. Since you won’t know who is receiving the letter, use the name “Christina” and we will replace it when sending the letters to a customer. Examples:
    • Hey Christina,
    • I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, Christina.
  • Refrain from using graphic violence, cursing, or sexual situations. Keep the letters at a PG-13 rating or below.
  • Refrain from referencing the recipient using any gender or any other identifier like where they may live since we don’t know anything about the recipient. Example, don’t use “Hey girl” or “How’s everything in Denver?”
  • Refrain from referencing any particular time of year or holidays since customers can buy your series at any time. If someone buys your series in August, it won’t make sense if the letter says, “I was just back in my hometown for Christmas.”
  • Do not use AI to write the letters. We want human-written stories, and we will use software to detect AI-written content.
  • Please edit and proofread for consistency in storyline across the letters, spelling, and grammar.

Why work with Fiction Mail?

We know you have a lot of outlets for your writing. Our goal is to make it a hands-off process for you after you do the work of writing the letters.

Once your series is published on our site all you need to do is promote it to your followers and collect your monthly commissions and affiliate fees.

We take care of everything else, including:

  • Formatting the letters and creating graphics and letterhead for your series.
  • Posting your series on our website and creating an author page that will display all the Fiction Mail series you wrote.
  • Fulfilling orders, which includes printing the personalized letters, printing and stuffing the envelopes, and mailing the letters each week.
  • Handling customer support.
  • Advertising and promoting on social media.

One of the big questions we get is: who owns the written work? The answer is YOU do. By submitting your letters, you give us permission to put them up for sale on Fiction Mail and sell them. If you want to discontinue the partnership at any time, all you need to do is let us know and we will take down the series from the site within 3 business days. We’ll then pay out any commission we owe you at the end of the month.

Ready to start writing?!?

If you’re interested in writing a Fiction Mail series, submit a pitch by filling out the pitch form here. We’ll get back to you in a day or two with the next steps.

Questions

Do you have a question about writing for Fiction Mail that’s not covered on this page? Just shoot us an email at eric@fictionmail.com!