Quote:
Originally Posted by Tony_A20
One of the big problems selling on Amazon and other American web publishers, is getting your hands on the 30% of your royalties withheld for tax purposes. If you are not a resident American author, and your country has a Tax Treaty with the US exempting you from withholding tax, you may apply for an exemption.
Have a read of this thread on the Amazon DTP forum to see the problems:
http://forums.digitaltextplatform.co...art=0&tstart=0
Another facet is that if you earn any money at all on Amazon or other American web publishers, and you don't have a withholding tax exemption, you MUST file a US Income tax return. If you don't, you are breaking US Law, and while the IRS may not knock on your door in a non-US country, heaven help you if you ever set foot on US soil anywhere in the world because you may be arrested as a tax dodger and end up in jail.
The IRS will get your 30% withholding tax, whether you file a return or not, and the only way to get your money back is to file a US Tax Return and claim a refund. Even if you blow it off, and let the IRS keep your withholding tax money, you MUST still file a US Tax Return or face the consequences. Oh, and if you do file a US Tax Return, the IRS will bury you in red-tape and you will end up paying US tax, as well as your home country tax, on your earnings. Isn't that nice?
Just another reason to sell on your own website.
Tony |
Without splitting hairs or arguing points, I'd believe that this situation, from your standpoint, sucks big time, and, as a dual-citizen living the US, I unfortunately can't really relate.
However, even after factoring in royalty cuts, taxes, and maybe even giving the damn thing away for free, finding and informing the proper market with a high traffic value trumps it all. Having a personal website is a triple-burden: #1: Driving users to the site, comparatively unknown even when stacked against something like Smashwords. #2: Establishing trust enough that users won't be wary of viruses, phishing scams, and so on. The site has to be safe for people to use it. #3: Convincing users that the material, the book, is worthy of a purchase and/or download, at least enough to overcome #2.
Even so, a lot of users going to the site are likely to be the ones seeking the author and material out. It completely nixes the window-shopping element, which is going to account for a primary amount of extra sales and the potential for more word of mouth exposure.
But it all depends upon what the author is going for, in either case. I'd even go so far as to say (minus the IRS-related headache) it'd be better to sell the book for cheap on Amazon than to give away elsewhere. If the right audience notices it, it'll probably sell pretty decently. But again, it depends upon what the author is looking to accomplish.
Someone else mentioned it before, but the author still would have to worry about site design and maintenance. If that gets lumped in to the inevitable jumble of marketing, editing, and everything else, then the actual amount of writing gets smaller yet.