Changes At Amazon Direct Publishing and Smashwords

Smashwords has announced a change to its dashboard, which it admits it hasn't tinkered with since it was launched several years ago.  Mark Coker has flagged that this overhaul is long overdue for some months and he has been building up his software team and deploying them on the new dashboard design recently.  Apparently it is going live sometime today (17 December 2013 for those reading this blog entry on Dave).

The existing dashboard has been sluggish in recent months, probably due to the increase in authors self publishing - if we're all pinging the server constantly to see how we did or didn't do in the last week, day, hour (inversely proportional activities based on how long you've been self publishing - once the reality sets in most make it at most a daily routine and I'm contemplating just diarising a monthly check).

The old dashboard is clunky, it takes a while to gather stats and always feels like one click too many, so hopefully the new dashboard is an improvement.  When it goes live, if it works (too many years involved in software launches, unfortunately) I'll update on it.

Amazon, not to be outdone, have announced that they're changing their payment methods for authors who have elected for electronic funds transfer.  Up until now authors had to accrue a minimum amount of royalties ($10, £10, Euros10 etc) before payment was made.  Now, apart from Brazil royalties, which retain a threshold, all royalties will be paid 60 days after the month the royalties were earned in.  The email suggests that any accrued royalties will have been transferred on the 16 December however I haven't checked my bank account.  What with Christmas around the corner I can't take much more excitement.

It may present a small problem for UK authors who have small amounts lodged with Amazon in their US region as the royalties will be paid less US tax unless they've jumped through the myriad hoops the US tax authorities make us jump through to take advantage of the tax arrangements between our countries - if that's how they treat friends, I'd hate to be on the wrong side of them generally.  The paperwork is so tortuous I've deferred all my payments from Smashwords for the time being as they treat all sales, regardless of where they occur, as being in the US.  One day I'll file that return, because I expect the UK government will expect me to pay tax on that income when I get it.

So if you publish on Amazon and Snashwords (which you should to gain access to Apple store sales) then check your dashboard and your bank account sometime today.  Hopefully they'll both make you smile.

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Amazon Improves Payment Options for Authors

As a self published author I have mixed feelings about Amazon.  On the one hand they have made the self published eBook market what it is today.  That they have done so using strong arm methods and resorting to outrageous bribery only diminishes them as they would do well in the eBook economy without resorting to these methods.

But, regardless, they have made self publishing, warts and all, a reality and there's no going back now.

One of the things that Amazon have done is break eBooks out of being a purely US occupation, they led the field in liberalising the market.  In the traditional book publishing world you have to negotiate individual publishing rights country by country, region by region.  And it is the publisher who has the biggest sway in which markets you can pitch in.  With Amazon, and with the other eBook retailers it is trying to oust, you can publish world-wide. You can opt not to sell your books in specific countries, if that is your wish, and I suspect part of that is related to those traditionally published authors who are still contracted to specific countries but retain the rights in others.  I can't think of any other reason why you'd want to restrict selling your books in any given country, unless you're trying to make a statement.  Or avoid a Fatwa.  And who wouldn't want to make a statement?

Amazon haven't got the international sales right at the moment; if you sell through all their international outlets then you sell to the US (and India via the US?), the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Japan, Canada and Brazil.  Their Createspace subsidiary breaks the sales down to the US, UK and Europe, with payments in Dollars, Sterling and Euros respectively.  That makes monitoring your sales much easier, especially as it is presented on one page.

Apple, however, appear to have trading stores in pretty well every country on the planet, with plans to expand to the international space station, no doubt.  I'm not sure how they pay their authors directly, but I sell through Smashwords which collates all payments made to them in whatever currencies, then converts them to US dollars and that sets the payment. Smashwords does the same with the likes of Barnes & Noble, Sony and so on, as well as selling directly themselves, and then pull all the payments together.

But the downside of all of the Amazon payment method for the author is that they tend to fragment them in that US sales are paid separately from UK sales.  Apart from Smashwords, which converts UK sales to US dollars and mashes them all together.  Although the Smashwords model is simpler than Amazon's, it does have one major drawback, in that none-US authors have to be paid their royalties less 30%, which is withheld by the US Government.  If your country of residence has a bilateral agreement with the US, which the UK does, then notionally you can have 100% of the royalties but it does involve a lot of form filling being witnessed by notaries who charge more than the 30% amounts to, unless you're a very successful author.  And of course the remaining 70% is subject to UK income tax.  The irony is that most of my Smashwords sales are split between the US and the UK, with a small amount originating in Canada, so a reasonable percentage of the money held back by the US Government relates to sales made in the UK.

Now Amazon have made a change that breaks the mould a little.  UK authors can elect to have any or all of their payments made by electronic fund transfer to a UK bank.  Not only does it seem to avoid the problems with the US tax withholding issue, but it also addresses another bugbear - up until this change Amazon only paid funds outside of the US by cheque and the minimum cheque payment is $100.  For many authors this is a lot of royalties to earn, especially if they are pitching their books at the economy end of the market as Amazon only pay 35% royalties on books retailing at under $2.99 (but bizarrely £1.49 in the UK and 2.60 Euros in Europe) so building up $100 can take a long time.  The EFT payments, in contrast, are anything above £10.

Time will tell if the next payments from Amazon from the US are free of US tax - it may be a step too far given that they already partition the UK origin sales anyway, so the US Government may not be amenable to the concept, but it should set a new standard for the other eBook sellers to follow.

Hopefully I will be able to report more in the near future.

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