Publishing your novel on Kindle:7

Money, money, money

If your novel still hasn't appeared a day after you trimphantly hit "Save and Publish," the chances are that you are new to Amazon, and were not asked for your address and account details when you signed up for Kindle Direct Publishing.

To remedy that ... and make sure that your royalties get to you ... go back to your Kindle Publishing page.  Up at the top right in the ribbon menu, you will see a label for your account.  (Mine says "Joan's Account.") Hit this, and a screen that you have to fill in arrives.

Put your name in the first box -- your real name, not your penname, if you used one.  Then scroll down the "country" menu until you come to where you live, and click that.  In Address line one, put your house number and your street, and your suburb in line two. (Don't use a post office box number, and don't abbreviate.)  Then your city and your zip code.  And after that, insert your phone number, with country and area code.

At this stage, US residents can  fill in their tax information.  (Foreign residents have a more daunting task ahead.)

Then go down to Your Royalty Payments.  This is where you register your bank account details if you have a US bank account.  Royalties from other Amazon marketplaces will be converted into US dollars and deposited at the same time. 

If you don't have a US bank acount, leave this part blank, and you will be paid by check.  It is a slower process than an electronic deposit, but you will eventually get your money.

Hit Save.

Taxes, taxes, taxes ....

It's a tricky business for foreign writers.

Amazon/Kindle automatically withholds 30% of your royalties for tax purposes unless you have a tax number, and your country has a tax treaty with the United States.  For details of this complicated situation, go to this very helpful page 

You can find out if your country does have a tax arrangement with the IRS by going to page 36 of this IRS document   (In the page-number box at the top, replace the number 1 with 36, and hit enter.)  Don't worry about the letters and numbers; the important part is whether your country is there or not.  If not, you will have to pay the 30% tax, and live with it.

If your country is listed as having a tax treaty with the United States, get going right now on getting a tax number, as it takes ages ... and your home country tax number isn't any kind of substitute.  The IRS simply does not recognize foreign tax numbers.

There are three kinds of tax numbers they do recognize: a TIN (temporary tax number), an EIN (empoyer identification number), or an ITIN (individual taxpayer identification number).  As you are an individual author, and not an employer or a business, the one that you need is an ITIN.

To apply for one of these, you have to fill in a Form W-7.  Download and print this.

The instructions for filling it out can be found HERE 

Then you have to prove that you are who you are . . .

 

The Quest for an Apostille

I didn't have this problem, because a university in Indiana obtained an ITIN on my behalf many years ago, but New Zealand Indie author Desiree Jury was kind enough to share her quest with me. While what she has to tell us applies to New Zealand, the process should be very similar in whatever tax treaty country is yours.

Attached to your W-7 you will require duly authorized copies of identification documents such as passport and driver’s licence. In most cases this requires you to obtain an Apostille. This is an internationally-recognised certificate under the Hague Convention, which “provides for the simplified certification of public (including notarized) documents to be used in countries that have joined the Convention.” (I quote from IRS instructions for form W-7).

To obtain an Apostille you need to take your passport, driver’s licence or similar to a Notary Public. I had to ask my lawyer, who found me a pleasant gentleman, who charged $50 for a splendid two-page certificate on cartridge paper, in English and French, with red seals and blue ribbon. Talleyrand would have loved it.

The completed Apostille must then be taken to the [New Zealand] Department of Internal Affairs to be duly authorized and entered on their website. This is done at the DIA Authenitication Unit, level 13, DIA 86-90 Lambton Quay, Wellington (another $32).

At this point you assemble your completed W-7 (ALL of it, not just the top page. Remember to fill in Exception #1, Third Party Withholding on Passive Income, on page 6; exception 1(d)). Attach your publisher’s form letter, your cover letter, and the apostille. Send it to the address given in the form. (Note: You can’t send this Express Courier unless it is addressed to a specific individual with a nominated phone number. You will have to settle for Economy Courier).

 Sit back and wait. Once you receive your ITIN you can complete the W8-BEN.

The address where you send all this material -- including the required letter from Amazon, which can be downloaded HERE, is:

Internal Revenue Service
ITIN operation
PO Box 149342
Austin, TX 78714-9342, USA

Then, as Desiree says, you sit back and wait, for about two months.  But finally, with luck, you will have your ITIN, and you will be able to fill in a form W-8BEN and send it to Amazon.

Download the W-8BEN

An example of how an individual author should fill it in

Once filled in and signed according to instructions, send it to:

Amazon Digital Services
Attn.: Vendor Maintenance
PO Box 80683
Seattle, WA 98108-0683, USA

And whew! ... that's it.