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Non-US Self-Publisher? Tax Issues Don’t Need to be Taxing

OH FOR THE LOVE OF FUDGE.

That’s what this whole tax-withholding-for-non-US-residents makes me want to scream. Out loud, and repeatedly. But as I’ve said before, self-publishing your e-book on the biggest online retailer in the world is so easy, there had to be something like this to balance it out.

If you haven’t been keeping up with this ongoing saga, here’s a quick recap. I spent eight months, give or take, trying to get my own Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN). I relied on the experiences of two other self-publishers, Sally Clements and Roz Morris, to help me out; the information the IRS provides wouldn’t help you find your way out of a small paper bag, let alone anywhere near an ITIN. Luckily once I had the damn thing, getting my full royalty payments and the money withheld from me in the year to date was easy and quick. But then, in the last few weeks, people started telling me that I didn’t need an ITIN at all—an Employee Identification Number (EIN) would’ve done the job, and an EIN was much easier to get. I posted about this possibility, and fellow Irish self-publisher David Gaughran volunteered to be the guinea pig—and got his EIN within minutes, and over the phone. This was extremely useful information, especially since another commenter (thanks, Janet!) told us that new IRS rules mean that starting this year, monies withheld will only be available for refund through the IRS—and not refunded automatically by KDP and CreateSpace, as they have been up until now.

I feared that most people wouldn’t read through all the comments on the original post, so I asked David to write a guest post for us here about how he got his EIN. Take it away, David…

“As many of you will know, Amazon and Smashwords are required by law to withhold 30% of the royalties earned by non-US authors until they settle their tax status. The commonly accepted method of doing so was going through the laborious process of getting an International Tax Identification Number (ITIN), which necessitates arcane form-filling, notarized copies of passports, embassy trips, fees, and inexplicable rejection (writers should at least be used to the last part). And indeed, this was the path I was on myself, up until yesterday.

In the last few weeks, I had heard some mutterings that there was an easier, quicker way, but hadn’t had time to look into it. After Catherine’s post on Monday, suggesting that self-publishers might be able to get an Employer Identification Number (EIN) instead, which will also do the trick, I decided to give it a shot.

First things first: I’m no tax expert. In fact, the entire subject turns my brain to soup. And I know as much about the law as this guy. All I can explain is how I got my EIN in ten minutes and how you should be able to do the same.

One final caveat: this only applies to self-published authors who are publishing through their own company (and that company must be set up outside the US). While the IRS doesn’t appear to ask for proof that you have actually established your own publishing company, I’m sure there are all sorts of reasons why you shouldn’t commence this process until you actually have.

1. Call the IRS at +1 267 941 1099

This is a direct line to the dedicated unit in Philadelphia that deals with foreign entities (that’s you) who need an EIN. Press 2 on the computerized menu to get through to an operator. While I’ve heard it’s possible to get your EIN through some embassies and consuls, that certainly doesn’t apply to all of them and this number will work for everyone. Note: they won’t take a call from anyone using a “speakerphone”. If you are using Skype on your laptop, have a set of headphones plugged in before you call, to avoid an undignified scramble around your apartment. Finally, while there is an online facility for doing this, foreign entities can’t use that.

2. Tell them you’re applying for an EIN for a foreign entity.

They may ask if you are a legal officer of the company or some such, I said that I was a sole proprietor, and the owner of the business, which satisfied them.

3. There’s a 50% chance that they will tell you that you need Form SS-4

You do not want to go down this path, which requires form-filling, fees, delays, and somehow locating a fax machine. If this is what they tell you, politely end the call, and call them back. I only had to do this once, and then got someone a little more helpful.

4. Give your details

They will ask for your name, mailing address, phone number, the name of your company, and the country it was incorporated. This will involve a lot of spelling and repetition, but make sure all the details are correct.

5. They will ask if this is for compliance with withholding

Say “yes”.

6. They will ask if this is for e-books

Say “yes”.

7. They will give you your EIN!!!

After confirming all your details, they will give you your EIN right there and then. Resist the urge to shower your helpful IRS employee with virtual kisses. Also, it’s probably best not to try and sell them your book. Write your EIN down somewhere safe, then save it on your computer, upload it to Dropbox, copy it to a thumb drive, email it to yourself, carve it on the biggest tree in your garden, and consider getting it tattooed somewhere private.

Submitting the W8-BEN

If you follow these steps, you will save yourself time, money, and a whole load of heartache. All you have left to do is fill out the W8-BEN (you didn’t really think you were going to avoid those forms altogether, did you?).

I have copied that advice here, as it requires a little modification now that you have an EIN rather than an ITIN.

First you need to download the W8-BEN form, and print it out. The official instructions for filling it out are here, but the below might be a little more helpful. Note: you will need one copy each for Amazon KDP, CreateSpace, and Smashwords.

Part I (You must fill out everything in blue ink)

1. Your full legal name.

2. The country you live in/pay taxes in (don’t abbreviate anything).

3. Type of beneficial owner: Check the box that says “Individual” (and nothing else).

4. Your physical address/street address (don’t abbreviate).

5. Your mailing address (only if different).

6. Select the “EIN” box, and fill your number in.

7. Your foreign tax number (i.e. your tax number in your country of residence. I actually forgot to include this, and some say it doesn’t matter, but there’s no harm putting it in).

8. Fill in your KDP Publisher No. (in Account Settings, bottom right of screen) on one form, the email address associated with your Smashwords account on the second form, and your Createspace Member No. (on your dashboard) on the third.

Part II (only fill out the parts indicated)

9a. Tick the box and write your country in the line provided (again, don’t abbreviate).

9b. Tick the box and fill in your EIN.

10. This bit will vary depending on your country.

For the first section (after “Article”), you will need the appropriate number for your country. It’s “XII” for Canada, “12” for the United Kingdom, and Ireland is “12” also. You will have to check the number for other countries here (and come back and tell us in the comments to save the next person doing so).
For the second section (the % withholding rate), fill in 0 (zero) for Canada, Ireland, or the United Kingdom. I believe Australia is 5, and you can check other countries here (Publication 515, Table 1).
For the third section (specify type of income), write “Royalties-12, Other”.
For the final section (Explain the reasons…) write “Beneficial Owner is a resident of…” and then write your country (and don’t abbreviate, people have been rejected simply for writing “U.K.”).

Part IV (skip Part III altogether)

Sign your name, date it, and write “Self” over “Capacity”.

And you’re done! While you might feel like cracking out the whiskey at this point, I recommend posting everything off right away. You will need to send a separate W8-BEN (an original, not a photocopy!) to each of the following that you have published with:

Amazon KDP: Attn. Vendor Maintenance, PO Box 80683, Seattle, WA 98108-0683, USA.
Smashwords: Tax Compliance Dept., 15951 Los Gatos Blvd., Ste 16 Los Gatoes, CA 95032, USA.
CreateSpace: 8329 West Sunset Road, Suite 200, Las Vegas, NV, 89113, USA.

I sent the forms off, by express post, with a simple cover letter stating I had attached the W8-BEN for compliance with withholding. It takes them a few weeks to process, but within a month or so, they should stop withholding your royalties (hooray!).

Under the old way, the advice was to wait until you had accrued a certain amount of royalties. That no longer applies, and you are recommended to apply for an EIN right away. Many self-publishers (like me) were so aghast at the laborious process that they put it off, knowing that they could apply for a refund of the taxes withheld at a future point. Apparently, new legislation means that you will no longer be able to do this. As such, you are advised to commence this process as soon as possible.

I would like to thank Roz Morris, Sally Clements, and my gracious host for doing all the real legwork on this issue, and whoever first discovered that you could simply phone up and get an EIN. This post merely builds on their hard-won knowledge.

Finally, if you are reading this at some time in the future, first of all, sorry for screwing up the planet, and second, you might want to check you are using the up-to-date W8-BEN form on the IRS website.”

And thank YOU, David!

So, to recap:

If you have an ITIN, there’s no need for you to be reading this post. Unless it’s for procrastination purposes. If so, we all understand.
If you have already applied for an ITIN and are waiting for it to arrive, my advice would be to wait a little bit longer. If it takes longer than a month from now for your ITIN to arrive, start chasing an EIN instead.
If you haven’t applied for anything yet, apply for an EIN. This will require you to have a company, even if that means just registering as a sole trader. Do you have to actually publish through this company, as in, do you have to purchase ISBNs and put the name of your company on your books? I highly doubt it. But I think filling out a companies registration form and being on the phone to the IRS for a few minutes is considerable less headachy than the ITIN application process.
Whatever you’re doing, hurry up. You can no longer get withholdings back for the year to date without applying to the IRS for a tax refund (apparently) and so my advice would be to do this before you release your book, if possible.
Good luck!

About David Gaughran:

David is the author of the South American historical adventure A Storm Hits Valparaiso and the short stories If You Go Into The Woods and Transfection, as well as Let’s Get Digital: How To Self-Publish, And Why You Should. He runs the popular publishing blog Let’s Get Digital, the history site South Americana, and has a regular column for Indie Reader.

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Categories Self-Printing

How (Not?) To Get Your Book Reviewed

23 Feb

One of the hardest things for a self-published author to do is to get their book reviewed. But you need reviews, if only to lend some weight to your Amazon listing and to reassure yourself that self-publishing your book isn’t the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. Book bloggers and other non-professional book sites (i.e. where the reviewers don’t get paid but read and review for love) are your best bets for getting your self-published book reviewed. But how do you get them to do it? How do you approach them? And where do you even find them in the first place?

How to get your book reviewed

(If you’d prefer NOT to get your book reviewed, please see below.)

The first step is to find suitable bloggers who might like to review your book, and there are two ways to do that. The first is to trawl through Futurebook’s extensive book blogger listing. (You can easily add your name, by the way, if you review books on your website or blog.) Make a list of potential reviewers for your book based on genre preferences, etc. The second thing you can do is find 1-3 recently traditionally published books that are similar to yours, e.g. if you read and liked Book X, you might like your Book Y too. Google their name along with the word review. The top results will probably be newspapers and magazines, but keep going. Soon you’ll get to the book bloggers. Add any suitable ones to your potential reviewers list.

The next step is research, and you cannot skip this step. You are asking these people to give up several hours of their life to read and review your book; the least you can do is spend five minutes looking around their site to see if you should even be sending your book to them in the first place. Check their submission guidelines and then follow them. Add the details to your list. If they say they don’t review self-published books, that means they don’t review self-published books. Take heed.

When I wrote Self-Printed just under a year ago, the problem plaguing self-published authors looking to get their book reviewed was what I called The Mean Problem, whereby self-published authors bristled at the idea of “giving books away for free” to reviewers. (Don’t. Even. Get. Me. STARTED.) I think this has changed, thankfully—especially now that e-books are more widely read and so, accepted by book reviewers—but a new problem has taken its place: Thinking People Care Syndrome. By default, nobody gives a rodent’s arse about anyone else’s book. Oh, you wrote a book, did you? WATCH WHILE I DON’T GIVE A RODENT’S ARSE. (This isn’t me saying this to you, but everyone saying it to everyone else.) Writing a book doesn’t equal people wanting to read it (unfortunately), and I think this is a point a lot of self-publishers—and even some traditionally published authors—don’t quite get. It’s probably the biggest realization I’ve had about this whole publishing world since I stuck a self-published toe in it back in 2010. Nobody cares.

Bleak, I know, but once you acknowledge that nobody cares—once you fully understand that that’s your starting-off point—you’ll take a different approach to book-selling. A more effective approach. And then you’ll sell more books. Because a writer who doesn’t understand that nobody cares will send an e-mail that says, “I just published something. If you’d like to review it, let me know.” But if you’re a writer who does understand, the next thing you’ll do is create something that makes me care about your book. This may be an e-mail, or it may be a press release or “sell sheet” in PDF attached to an e-mail, or even a little video. It should be professional, informative and interesting, but also short and to the point.

It should tell me:

who you are
what the book is about
the what/when/where of the book’s publication
whether I’d be getting an e-book or a paperback
how to get in contact with you if I want to review it
something that makes me think, Oooh, I’d like to read that.

I don’t know you and I haven’t read your book (yet?), so my entire impression of you and your work is going to be formed from this e-mail. This is something to keep in mind.

Your e-mail might look something like this, attached to a one-page PDF document filled with relevant and interesting information about you and your book:

To [first name]

I am the author of Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida, a travel memoir of the eighteen months I spent living in Orlando and working in Walt Disney World. I really enjoyed your review of [SIMILAR BOOK]—I too laughed out loud at the bit [MEMORABLE INCIDENT FROM SIMILAR BOOK]!—and as my book is similar, I thought you might be interested in reading and potentially reviewing it.

I’d be happy to send you a complimentary copy. There is, of course, no obligation to review it; I appreciate that you must get countless books to review and don’t have the time to read and review all of them. I completely understand.

If you are interested in receiving a copy, please forward a postal address and I will mail one to you immediately. Alternatively if you’d like an e-book edition please tell me your preferred format and I will e-mail it to you.

Please see attached document for more information. I’m also available for interview, guest-posting, etc. If there’s anything else I can supply you with—images, more information, links, etc.—please let me know.

Thank you for your time,

[Your name]

If you’ve done your job, you’ll have sent me something that makes me think:

you’re a professional
who has written an interesting, potentially good book
that I want to read because you’ve done your research on me.

Therefore I’ll e-mail you back to say, “Yes—send me this book!” and then I’ll read it and like it and review it, and your job will be done. Mission accomplished. Repeat as required. And well done you.

How NOT to get your book reviewed

The first step is to find book bloggers who don’t read books on the same planet as yours, let alone in the same genre, and bloggers who don’t review books at all. At least half of your potential reviewer list should be made up of these non-book-reviewing bloggers, and everyone on it should say somewhere on their website that they never read or review self-published books. That’s, like, the most important bit. Throw in a few self-published authors as well. I mean, why not? When Patricia Cornwell has a new book out the first thing she does is offer a copy to Karin Slaughter, right?

Don’t visit any of the sites or blogs on your list. You don’t need to, because this is your book we’re talking about. So what if it’s chick-lit and the site is called CrimeSpreeBooks.com? Once they hear about the plot (twenty-something fish out of water with man troubles catalogues her wardrobe and hangs out with her ditzy best friend; giggles ensue), they’ll forget all about serial killers, Scandinavia and grisly body parts and read nothing but you forever more.

Also, don’t bother with those yawn-inducing “Contact” forms or collecting the bloggers’ actual e-mail addresses from the submission information on their sites. That’s just a gigantic waste of time. BOR-ing. Instead, use this handy shortcut:

Take the domain of the website, e.g. www.INeverReviewBooksLikeYours.com, and cut out the “www.”
Replace it with “info@”.
Send your e-mail to that address, i.e. info@INeverReviewBooksLikeYours.com.
If you get a failure notice, try “admin@” instead. One of them is bound to work, right?

So now you have a long list of people who don’t read books like yours—many of whom also don’t review books at all—and e-mail addresses for them that may or may not work, and if they do work, aren’t anything to do with the way they’ve asked you to contact them as per the instructions on their site. The next thing to do is to send out a mass e-mail to all of them that does one or more of the following things:

annoys
gets the Delete button clicked
gets the Spam button clicked
gets the Block Recipient feature enabled
incites anger and/or frustrated pencil-snapping
inspires the recipient to write an extremely sarcastic blog post about reviews
gives the recipient the impression that you think giving them a copy of your book is bestowing upon them a beautiful gift, and not that them reading and reviewing your book is them doing you an immeasurable favor. (Mucho bonus points for doing this.)

How can you achieve this? Well, I’m glad you asked! To make absolutely sure that you make your reviewer experience all of the above, remember to:

Ignore all the review-related information on the blogger’s site, e.g. submission guidelines, preferred genres, etc. If you’ve followed my instructions thus far, you’ve already done this. Well done you! Earn bonus points by including a blatant lie about having researched their site, e.g. “I know you love science-fiction” when there is not one mention of science-fiction anywhere on the blogger’s site, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Omit any information about your book. Just put a link to your website instead, man. That way you get a hit too. And bonus points will be awarded for not activating the link; it’s even better if the recipient has to manually copy and paste the URL into their browser’s address bar. Oh YEAH.
Use CC instead of BCC, so every single one of the 391 people you sent the e-mail to can see everyone else’s e-mail addresses. Who doesn’t love that?
Include an ultimatum. If you do one thing to not get your book reviewed, make it this. Ultimatums can be one or more combinations of the following book review ultimatum categories: Schedule Ultimatums (“Only accept a copy if you are in a position to post your review between March 4th and April 10th…”), Content Ultimatums (“I ask that you only post your review if it’s a positive one…” or “You can’t mention the misspelling on the cover in your review…”) and Action Ultimatums (“I propose a review exchange. I’ll send you a copy of my book and you send me a copy of yours. Once your positive review of my book appears on Smashwords, I’ll read and review yours [Ed. note: ??!?!?!?!???!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?! Another ed. note: I actually got an e-mail that said this.]. Here’s an inactive link to my website where you can find out more…”).
Insult the reviewer. If there’s one thing book bloggers lurve, it’s authors who are happy to send them stacks of shiny books until they post a negative review of their work. After that, it’s all “Oh my god you are SO unprofessional” and “I’m going to bitch about you on every forum I can find” and “Then I’m going to send all my, ahem, fans (read: friends) your way so they can leave bitchy comments about you on your site” and “Who are you, anyway? I bet you’re a failed writer who can barely contain her jealousy that I have a book for sale.” Yep. And the only kind of author they love even more is the kind that makes a pre-emptive strike against such behavior. Get in this category by saying something like, “Before I send you my book, I want to make sure that in return I’ll get a balanced and fair review where, if something is not to your liking, you’ll quantify why. Perhaps you could send me some samples of your previous reviews so I can check that you’re up to the task…?”
Tell them your mother loved it. So simple, but oh so effective.
Pretend you are not the author but the author’s Proper Publicist-Type even though the e-mail is clearly from your personal account and slips into the first person before the end of the message. A classic technique, this.
Don’t even bother pretending that you’re after a review. I mean, why would you want a review? They’re for losers. You want sales. So say something like, “My book is for sale now on [insert link]” and then just leave it at that. For a truly annoying touch, add some hollow humility like, “I don’t expect you to buy it, but I’m going to send you this e-mail about how to buy it just in case. I mean, I know you don’t know me and we’ve never been in contact before and you only got this e-mail because I noticed you had a dot-com domain name and so chances are you have an info@ e-mail address but hey, this is my book we’re talking about. Trust me: you’re gonna want to read this baby.”

Therefore if you don’t want to get your book reviewed, your e-mail will look more like this:

To Blogger

I’m a fancy pants book publicist from a fancy pants book publicists’ office. I’m contacting you today in the hope that you actually have this e-mail address and because I know you’ll be interested in reading [GENERIC TITLE], a stunning debut by [AUTHOR'S NAME] that’s available now on Amazon for $1.99. I’m fairly certain of this because of your blog header. (Yes, I know your blog header is actually nothing to do with the subject matter of this book, but just go with it.) Go to www.generictitle.com now to find out more because that’s all the information I’m going to give you and this e-mail isn’t attached to anything except what is sure to be one of the biggest sellers of 2012. As Person With The Same Last Name as the Author has said of it, “You typed this whole thing? Like, yourself? Wow! I’m impressed.”

As I’m sure you’re aware self-published authors don’t have a lot of money and as a self-published author yourself, I know you’d appreciate me asking you to appreciate this and perhaps buy the book instead of getting a FREE copy of it…? I mean, come on. You’d probably spend double the price on a cup of coffee, am I right? Anyway if you must take money out of my—I mean, the author’s—pocket, I can send you an e-book with your name on every page so if you pass it on and it ends up on one of those piracy sites, I’ll know it was you. Yeah, I know what you book blogger types are like! I wasn’t born yesterday. Thus before I send you anything, I’m going to need a guarantee that you’ll post a review of it. Perhaps you could scribble a quick contract and send it to me, signed and notarized, along with your passport? I promise I’ll send it back after my (positive!) review goes live.

Oh, and I—we— need you to do this review thing ASAP. Like, yesterday. I got bills, y’know?

I’m also gonna need assurances that you’ll accompany my review with links to my blog, site, Twitter feed, Facebook profile, Flickr albums and Goodreads page, and that you won’t use any photos of me in which my left side predominantly features.

That’s what’s up.

LATERS,

The Auth—I mean, The Author’s Fancy Pants Publicist

And so, to recap:

If you give me a copy of your book to review and I read and review it, it is me who is doing you a favor.
Book bloggers specify what kind of books they like to review on their websites. Read this information. If it’s not there, a quick flick through a list of their existing reviews will help you determine whether or not your book is for them.
By default, nobody cares about anybody else’s book. Your job is to get me—and everyone else—to care.
If you’ve self-published a book, that doesn’t mean that other self-published authors will want to read it. It doesn’t work that way.
I won’t leave your e-mail to go looking for information about your book, so don’t ask me to.
Sending an e-mail that’s trying to sell something to someone you don’t know is called spam. Sending spam could get your e-mail account blocked and deactivated.
Putting me on a mailing list without my consent will not get me to buy your book. It will only get me to report you to your e-mail provider for abuse. This extends to lists of e-mail addresses you made yourself and then sent mass mailings to, not just “formal” mailing lists. If you haven’t communicated with the person before, you shouldn’t be sending them mass anything.
I’m not even a book blogger and yet I found myself with more than enough material to write this post. I CAN’T EVEN IMAGINE the gems actual book bloggers get sent.

Finally, we all know that the majority of submissions agents and editors get are smeared with crazy, unprofessionalism and coffee rings. That’s why we strive to make our own pristine, clean, correctly formatted, in adherence with their submission guidelines and smelling fresh; we want to give a professional impression. Do the same with your book review correspondence. Be professional, target suitable reviewers, don’t be pushy, demanding or frightening, and your book will get reviewed.

Happy reviewer-searching!

(Thought for the day: this blog post is nearly 3,000 words long. My book isn’t finished. Coincidence?)

Public service announcement: By the way, I don’t really review books anymore. A quick look around my site would reveal that (a) the last time I posted a review was August 2011, (b) if I do have time to review something, it’s not self-published books I choose to review and (c) does this look like a book review-centric blog to you? So I don’t really know why I’m even getting e-mails from authors in the first place. Although after this, I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting any.

Was that my evil plan all along? We’ll never know…

[Mysterious Mona Lisa-esque smile]

Comments 30 Comments
Categories Self-Printing

How To Launch a Bestseller: A Guest Post from Mel Sherratt

22 Feb

Today we have a guest post from Mel Sherratt, author of the bestselling Taunting the Dead which she recently self-published in e-book. It’s been such a huge success that everyone wants to know, how did she do it? Welcome to Catherine, Caffeinated, Mel!

“One question I’ve been asked a lot recently is have I had a well defined publicity campaign for my ebook, TAUNTING THE DEAD. So I thought I’d tell you what I did. Last December, I had a ‘launch’ day on twitter when I tweeted about it as often as I could and lots of people kindly retweeted this blog post for me. I also did three guest posts on book blogs during that same week. Over the next few weeks, momentum slowly built up and sales increased daily until a couple of weeks ago when I had a feature in my local evening newspaper. My sales figures doubled on that day, then doubled again the following day and have increased ever since. So is it social media or my ‘voice’ on Twitter or is it TAUNTING THE DEAD itself that is getting noticed?

I’m not sure if there is any wrong or right way for a writer to approach Twitter. I don’t see anything wrong with authors tweeting about their book – we all need to do it – as long as it isn’t incessantly in my timeline. But I use twitter as my virtual office. It’s my place to go and ‘chat’ when I need a break so I don’t want to alienate people who I enjoy chatting to. I don’t promote my book in the sense of putting a link into several tweets a day but I do tweet out if someone has been kind enough to say something good about my book, out of pure delight that they’ve done so. I’m only human – I want to share. But then I get fearful that I might annoy someone in their timeline too!

I also think book bloggers, as well as people who follow me on twitter, have played an instrumental part in promoting TAUNTING THE DEAD. It’s the only thing I can think of, apart from possibly, word of mouth – or maybe readers of my blog following my writing journey. I run a blog called High Heels and Book Deals and for the past two years have hosted author interviews and reviewed lots of books in between sharing posts about my writing. I’m often told that the blog has become a tool to learn from as there are lots of hints and tips about writing from some great authors. Before I uploaded my ebook, I had a few crime bloggers/reviewers review the book for me and I think because they were well known and respected, it had a good effect on my sales. People were extremely kind and I hope that’s because I gave my time to some of them when their own books were out. I do my fair share of retweeting too. My followers on Twitter also tweet out things without asking and often do ‘tweet outs’ for me when I have news, for instance when I went to # 5 in the overall Kindle charts.

So I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has taken time out to write a review, to host me on a blog post or to tweet out my news. Because that in itself has been my promotion. You out there have played a huge part in it.”

About Mel:

Ever since she can remember, Mel Sherratt has been a meddler of words. Right from those early childhood scribbles when she won her first competition, she was rarely without a pen in her hand or her nose in a book. Born and raised in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, Mel now uses her beloved city as a backdrop for her crime thriller novels. A self confessed shoeaholic, Mel also hosts a blog called High Heels and Book Deals. Taunting the Dead is her first novel and she is represented by Curtis Brown Literary Agency.

About Taunting the Dead:

‘Gritty and atmospheric, Mel Sherratt knows all about the dangers that lurk within those mean streets.’ Niamh O’ Connor

Statistics say nine out of ten murders are committed by someone the victim knows. So when Steph Ryder is found dead with her head caved in, Detective Sergeant Allie Shenton begins investigations close to home, starting with the victim’s family and friends. As each one tries to cover up their actions on that fateful night, Allie becomes convinced husband Terry Ryder has something to hide. Powerful, ambitious and charming, Allie’s attraction to the successful businessman grows with each interrogation, risking both her job and marriage. But he’s not the only one she’s investigating. Secrets and lies begin to escalate as quickly as the body count. Can Allie uncover the truth before her life not only falls apart, but before she ends up a victim, too? Taunting the Dead is a sexy, gritty, fast paced thriller that will set your pulse racing, twist and turn you in every direction and leave you guessing right until the very end…

Thanks Mel! Click here to find Taunting the Dead on Amazon.com and here to find it on Amazon.co.uk.

Comments 3 Comments
Categories Special Guest Stars, Using Social Media

US Tax Withholdings and Alphabet Soup

20 Feb

[UPDATE: Please make sure to read the comments on this post too, as fellow Irish self-publisher David Gaughran explains how he got his EIN—in minutes.]

[UPDATE #2: Author Melissa Hill advises me that Irish residents might be better off contacting the US Embassy in London. I guess it doesn't matter which embassy you contact anyway, but it seems that London is better equipped to deal with these kinds of applications/enquiries than the Dublin one is.]

[UPDATE #3: Commenter Janet advises that starting this year, new IRS rules will mean that companies such as CreateSpace, etc. WON'T be able to refund withholdings from the current year. That will mean that any monies withheld will go straight to the IRS, and you'll have to apply to them to get the refund. If getting an EIN/ITIN is rocket science, filing tax returns with the IRS when you don't live in the US is string theory and chaos theory combined; my advice would be to get your EIN or ITIN before you're due a single royalty cheque, if possible.]

You may recall that before Christmas I posted about the saga of obtaining a US Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN) so that I could receive my royalty cheques from the likes of Amazon, CreateSpace and Smashwords without them withholding 30% from me, which is what they’re obligated by law to do if there’s no tax information provided. Since then there’s been a couple of comments left on the post saying that self-published authors outside the US don’t need an ITIN, only an Employer Identification Number (EIN), and EINs are far, far easier to get.

I’m certain this is true, not only because of the commentors but because I know writers who aren’t self-published who use it for things like getting paid for features from US publications. I’m not an expert but this is the way I think it works:

An ITIN is for earning royalties in the US as a non-US resident. Let’s say you were published in the US by Penguin Books, for example. Other companies are distributing the book to stores and websites, and Penguin are collecting the money because the book is their product, and you’re entitled to royalties from each sale. To get paid them, you need an ITIN. But with a self-published book, the product is yours. Amazon KDP, CreateSpace and Smashwords are just distributing it and then paying you; there’s no middle man, no entity in between who can claim it’s their product. The royalties are really just profits. Thus you are just doing business in the US. You’re just selling a product. And in order to get your 100% instead of seventy, you merely need an EIN.

So how do you get an EIN? You can apply online at the IRS website, although it’s a “live” application service and so can only be used during certain times of the day (specified on the site). You also apparently have the option of phoning your nearest US Embassy where you might end up with your EIN before you hang up the phone.

You may have to, ahem, pretend that at some stage in the future you might take on some staff…

(Well, when you start selling a gazillion e-books a second, you are going to need an assistant, right?)

What if you have an ITIN? Well, like me, you’ve just done some form filling and IRS-stressing you didn’t really have to, but hey, it’s done now. It’s not wrong to have an ITIN, it’s just you could have got an EIN instead. The people who know this seem to be freaking out all over the interweb, leaving excitable public service announcements on other people’s blogs to alert them, and while I love when useful information is shared, I don’t really see the need for a full-on freak out about this. Getting an ITIN is not difficult—what is difficult is trying to do it with the information the IRS provide, and you don’t have to because plenty of self-published authors have blogged about how they got theirs. (Including me.) Plus, whenever you get your number, be it an ITIN or EIN, you get refunded all your withholdings from the year to date, so waiting a few weeks isn’t going to make a difference unless it pushes you into a new calender year. My point is, calm down.

If you have an ITIN, you shouldn’t even be reading this because your tax situation is already sorted. (But of course I’m glad that you’re here!)

If you’re in the processing of applying for it, just wait. You’ll get all your money back anyway.

But if you haven’t started the process at all, get on the phone to your nearest US Embassy or follow the link to the online application, and then come back and tell me how you got on.

Comments 29 Comments
Categories E-Books, Self-Printing

6 Tenuous Links to Something

15 Feb

I’m flying to London tomorrow so I can be there bright and early on Friday morning to deliver this—there’s only, like, a couple of places left (I think!) but it’s not too late to book yours (I think!)—and since right now I’m probably having a mild panic attack involving too much coffee and a Power Point presentation, I don’t have time to write a proper blog post. So instead I’m going to share with you a number of things that have very tenuous links to me flying to London tomorrow to teach a self-publishing course at Faber Academy on Friday. Okay? Okay.

1. Midnight in Paris

Paris is my favorite city in the world even though I have spent nowhere near as much time as I’d like there. Also right now I’m on a bit of a Paris reading binge: I’m in the middle of The Paris Wife and Time Was Soft There is up next. So Midnight in Paris is the perfect in-flight entertainment. I rented it from iTunes, which I found out like two days ago I could do. Only problem: I may burst into tears when the doors open and it’s Heathrow outside instead.

2. Paperchase

Paperchase is my favorite store in the whole wide world, except here in Ireland we don’t have any. We only have small Paperchase concessions in other stores, and we only got them in the last couple of years. (Whatever.) But London has over 20 Paperchase locations. When I first became a Paperchase fan, they had something like three stores in the universe and no online shopping, and I once made a trip to Manchester, England just to spend an afternoon in their flagship. So this is QUITE EXCITING. Especially since in Ireland we seem to pay the exchange rate plus an extra 20 or 30% just for kicks, so shopping in the UK will be a bargain by comparison.

3. Bookstores

I only have a couple of hours to spend strolling around London, but that doesn’t mean I can’t google “Best bookstores in London” and see if any of them are near where I’ll be. Turns out there’s loads, including the largest bookstore in Europe which is apparently Waterstones Piccadilly. Which also has a Paperchase. EXCUSE ME WHILE MY HEAD EXPLODES FROM JOY.

4. Google Street View

I have a fear of not knowing where I’m going when I travel by myself. Coming out of train, bus and tube stations is a great way for this to happen. For example, the directions might say “10 minutes walk from X station” but how do you know what street you’re on when you exit the station? What if there’s no street sign? What if you don’t want to stand there looking lost in case that’s just what muggers are looking for? What if there’s no one nice around to ask for directions? What if they’re actually a serial killer and now they’ve just led you to their secret death lair? And so on. And on. But Google Street View solves all that. I simply go to the address of the station, and then follow until I get to my hotel or wherever. Then I know exactly where to go when I’m there for real, plus I can suss out how many Starbucks are along the route. You know, in case of emergency.

5. Cheap Flights

Here in Europe we have a love/hate relationship with the bargain basement airlines that fly us around for €9.99 ex. all taxes, charges, your luggage, a seat and a life jacket. If you’ve heard people ranting about Ryanair and don’t know why, watch the video above. It also has lots of Irish swear words.

6. Another Self-Publishing Course

If you can’t get to London, I’m off to Dublin in two weeks to do a one-day self-publishing course with the Inkwell Group. And while there’s no big Paperchase there, there is a Muji…

If you’re nowhere near London or Dublin and you’d still like me to help you self-publish, you can always read this instead.

Comments 3 Comments
Categories General Randomness, Self-Printing

My New Favorite Twitter Thing: Buffer

13 Feb

The observant among you may have noticed that in the past week I’ve been uncharacteristically tweeting at all sorts of times, e.g. very early in the GMT morning/very late in the EST night. Have I cut out my beloved sport of regular napping? No. Have I suddenly fell victim to insomnia? Chance would be a fine thing. Has my almost total immunity to caffeine undone itself? I wish. If it did, I might get some actual work done.

Was I tweeting at four am? HARDLY. And also: isn’t the headline all you need to know?

No, it’s none of the above. Instead I’ve taken the advice of Steven Lewis of Taleist and signed up for Buffer, a service that helps you to spread out your tweets. And in doing so, enables you to schedule your tweets. And which makes it super easy to tweet links in the first place. And it’s free, by the way.

I’m a little bit in love with it.

Here’s how it works (click the images for larger versions):

You sign up for Buffer and link it to your Twitter account. Create a schedule for your buffered tweets based on your own time zone. I don’t think there’s a limit on times but for a free account you can only buffer up to 10 tweets at a time.

Then put the snazzy little “Add to Buffer” button to your browser. (It’s the one that looks like a stack of three square things.)

Click it whenever you’re on a page you want to tweet a link to and then sit back and relax while Buffer sends out your tweets as per your schedule. Every time you add a tweet it’ll show you by way of a progress bar how many tweets you have waiting to go out, and if you want to tweet it right now instead, you just press the—yes, you’ve guessed it—”Post Now” button.

And you can of course also just write Buffer tweets if tweeting links aren’t your thing. You can do that from your Dashboard.

If you can’t think of anything to say, there’s even an “Inspire Me!” button that throws up all sorts of quotables. And if you use Twitter.com, you’ll see a little “Add to Buffer” button in everyone else’s tweets, so you can add a retweet to your stack of tweets-in-waiting if you’d like.

Scheduling your tweets is not something I ever really worry about, at least not in the “time zone” sense. Yes, it would be nice if someone outside of GMT was around to see one of my 140-character utterances every now and then, but I’ve never stressed about it. Worrying about things like that sounds too much like work to me. BUT my tweeting has really fallen by the wayside recently, and most days I release a clump of tweets mid-morning and then no one hears from me for the rest of the day. I’m just too busy to stop and think about spreading my tweets evenly throughout the day.

Buffer solves this problem, because with it my five minutes of writing tweets or posting links translates into up to ten tweets spread out during the day.

But it also just makes it easier to post links to Twitter, because all I have to do is click twice. Once on the Buffer button in my browser, and then “Add to Buffer” in the window that appears. So the hours of my day set aside for staring out the window and other procrastination activities are safe for now…

Sign-Up for Buffer! (And Help Me!)

I’m not sure if this link will work (I think they intend for you to tweet this link once or twice, not blog it, but anyway…) but if I refer people to Buffer and they sign up, both they and I get extra space for buffered tweets. Try signing up here and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, just sign-up by yourself; I’ll get over it. But whatever you do, do sign-up!

[UPDATE: It's totally working. Woo-hoo!]

Comments 4 Comments
Categories Self-Printing, Using Social Media

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Catherine, Caffeinated