What Partnership Rates Can You Expect as a Bookish Creator?

When I signed with my influencer agency in early 2025 and saw the rates they set for me, I was speechless. I think my jaw actually hit the floor. Based on my high engagement rate, my agency set my rates 5 times higher than what I had been charging brands. Given my agency’s experience in the creator industry, I was excited to move forward and felt confident that I would have success with brand partnerships.

Fast forward several months, and I still have not landed a partnership that comes anywhere near those initial rates. In fact, they have cut my rates by 50% and I have only landed one partnership at that rate.

I’m not here to gate keep, so I’ll clue you in on the numbers.

At the beginning of 2025, I received an offer of $500.00 for 3 story frames, an in-feed static carousel, and an exclusive link-in-bio for 72 hours.

There’s only one way to describe this offer — utterly offensive.

My agents, who represent over 50 creators and have been managing influencers for over 5 years, said that given my stats at the time, the lowest they would feel comfortable accepting was $5000.00 — literally 10x the initial offer. I still have these numbers in my email thread, and I went back to double check before sharing them in this post to ensure accuracy.

After negotiations with the brand, we were unable to come close to a reasonable offer, so I passed.

But is this the norm?

Unfortunately, extremely low offers seem to be the norm in the book space.

I’ve been at this for several months now, and my agents have outright told me that they have had a lot more difficulty securing partnerships for me and the few other book creators on their roster than for their creators in other areas. They have also indicated that when they are able to secure partnerships that near the industry average with bookish creators, it tends to be with creators who do not focus solely on books.

Why are the rates so low?

There are a few reasons that come to mind. While it makes sense to me that bookish brands do not necessarily have the same budgets as other brands, the fact that they are making offers 10x lower than the industry average is not just due to budget.

Unfortunately, the longer I have been in the creator space and the more connections I have made, I have become aware of many large book creators that accept offers far below the industry standard.

And here’s the thing —

I find it hard to believe that brands don’t have the money to pay creators well. I have worked with new small businesses that have offered 2-3x as much as some large, well-established corporations that have reached out to me.

The full, non-redacted article is available on my Substack.