Setting up as a self-published author on Amazon (Part 2)

Intro and disclaimer: I am a UK-based writer. I signed up to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service during September 2012 with an aim to publish a selection of stories on Kindle and Kindle apps. These posts are aimed to describe the process I went through and shouldn’t be considered professional advice. This is the internet after all. Still, I hope you find it of use. Okay, let’s get stuck in.

Part 2 – Joining Amazon KDP

In part 1 I discussed the merits and drawbacks of publishing your work through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) service. In this part I’ll discuss the process of joining KDP.

You can find Amazon’s KDP service via this link to their homepage. Alternatively look towards the bottom of most Amazon pages and you’ll see a link that says “Self-publish with us”.

Once on the homepage you can sign up to KDP using your existing Amazon account, which is a cinch. (I don’t believe there is anything to stop you creating another Amazon account if you wish to keep things separate.)

Once in you will be asked to complete a few details about yourself, such as name, address and phone number. Finally, on this same page, you can enter the details of a bank account for your royalties. (Amazon will send you a cheque each month subject to a minimum of £100/$100/€100 if you do not supply a bank account.)

UK authors should be aware that sort codes and account numbers won’t cut it here. Instead you will need your account’s IBAN number and your bank’s BIC code. Your IBAN will contain your sort code/account combination prefixed with a country code and some check digits. The BIC code is used to globally identify your bank. You can often find these details on your bank statement. If you bank online should be able to find your IBAN and BIC after some digging. (Look for anything that allows you to print a statement.) Failing that you can contact your bank.

UK authors should also note that providing a UK bank account will cover royalties for most Amazon marketplaces (currently UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy), but not Amazon US. I think for the US marketplace you need to provide details of a US$ bank account, for which a UK bank may charge. (I think that’s a reasonable assumption to make in this day and age!) The alternative is to have Amazon send you a cheque, as mentioned earlier. Annoyingly this too will be in US$, and your bank will likely charge you a sizeable sum to pay it into your account. I sincerely hope this arrangement changes the more that Kindle catches on in the UK.

Finally, and this is absolutely crucial for non-US residents, make sure you don’t pay any unnecessary taxes. By default Amazon has to apply 30% withholding tax, payable to the IRS, on all royalties it pays to non-US residents. If that’s not bad enough authors then need to apply their own domestic income tax to whatever remains! Thankfully there is something you can do, but it requires a fair bit of legwork. A number of countries have a tax treaty in place with the US so that all or some of the withholding tax can be waived. You will need to apply for a US tax number, called an ITIN, and complete a form for each US-based publishing platform you intend to use. (I’ll cover this in a separate “General Setup” post as I’ve only recently started the process.)

So that’s the initial setup of KDP performed. Next we’ll move onto the fun stuff!

Coming next in part 3: Publishing an eBook via Amazon KDP.

Final note: If you see anything that is incorrect in any of these pages please let me know. It’s not my intention to misinform!

Setting up as a self-published author on Amazon (Part 1)

Part 1 – About Kindle Direct Publishing

Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is a service provided by Amazon that allows writers to publish their work on Kindles and Kindle apps for tablets and smartphones. Readers can then purchase and download said work to their device as they would any other eBook.

Authors using KDP can earn 70% royalties on works priced $2.99 or more. If the author drops the price below $2.99 then a royalty rate of 35% applies. The minimum price an author can charge is $0.99. By enrolling their work in the KDP Select program for 90 days authors can drop the price to zero for a total of 5 of those days, but they must grant Amazon exclusivity on that work during the 90 day period. Authors can enrol their work in KDP Select for another stint once the 90 day period ends, but any remaining free days will not carry over.

Once you have published work through KDP it will be listed on Amazon like any other book. (Believe me, few things beat seeing your debut book listed for the first time!) There are a number of benefits to this. For a start, now that you have published a book, you can build a profile on Amazon’s Author Central. (The “Visit Amazon’s Lucian Poll page” link around halfway down your book’s Amazon page.) Said book will also have its own ASIN number, which is similar to an ISBN but relative only to Amazon. Armed with an ASIN and a cover image you can then add your self-published books to sites such as Goodreads. This then helps you to change your Goodreads profile from a standard user to an author, which in turn allows you to promote your books on their site with the odd giveaway. (They have to be hard copies, though.)

Oh, and if you needed any further incentive to give Amazon’s KDP a try, it doesn’t cost a bean to publish a book. They will slice off their pound of flesh when you make a sale, but there are no monthly fees to worry about, and your book will stay available as long as Amazon sticks around, allowing you to become that overnight sensation thirty years in the making.

While I love the idea of Amazon KDP and the huge marketplace it presents, the minimum $0.99 price tag does make it harder to promote one’s work. On Smashwords, for example, authors can make the first novel of a trilogy permanently free and perhaps encourage readers to purchase the remaining books. On Kindle you can’t do that. Well, not really. A tactic some authors use is to list their title on Amazon for $0.99 and free on another platform, and then hope that Amazon price-matches the book down to zero. I’m not sure if this tactic still works, being new to this self-publishing game, but it’s curious how I keep seeing the same books in the Kindle Top 100 Free Books chart…

Finally, consider whether you will ever want to see your work in print. Publishers and agents may be less enthusiastic to represent your work if it has already been published. That said the industry is changing. Indie authors such as Amanda Hocking have found publishers more than happy to print her novels following strong sales of her eBooks, and more agents are turning into eBook publishers. If you are lucky you can let your sales do the talking!

Coming next in part 2: Joining KDP (and the potential arse-ache for UK authors!)

Final note: If you see anything that is incorrect in any of these pages please let me know. It’s not my intention to misinform!

The Story So Far

My last post elicited an interesting response from Eric J Baker. (Check him out. His neat short story ‘Worm‘ made me smile.) As I’m fairly early into the process of setting up Lucian Poll he suggested I perhaps posted about the experience. It was an idea that I had toyed with, especially if the ups and downs of my somewhat improvised approach can help others.

So why not? If anything it’ll help me keep track of the stuff that I still need to do!

This post is therefore a précis of what has gone before. I’ll expand on the finer details with less garrulous posts under a category called “Setting up”.

1. Writing some stories – I think that goes without saying! In truth, I feel I should have perhaps written more stories before setting up this blog, but that’s what the winter months will be for. As it stands I have three short stories that are finished, three that are in progress, umpteen ideas still to get onto paper, and then there is the plot outline for the novel which I continue to flesh out. There’s a bit to be getting on with, anyway.

2. Maintaining a web presence – I chose a handful of sites, services and social networks that I hoped would help me build a presence on the web that could, in turn, lead to a few readers for my stories. I’ve likened these sites to spinning plates: I don’t want too many of them otherwise they’ll encroach on all the other things I need to do, namely writing!

With regards to social networking I have set up accounts with Facebook and Twitter, along with profiles on the forums of a few well-respected fiction magazines, such as Cemetery Dance. For publicity I’ve created an account with Goodreads, Amazon’s Author Central, and this blog on WordPress, plus I also purchased a domain name to help keep my address short and easy to remember. For the actual publishing side of things I have an account with Kindle Direct Publishing, and another with SmashWords so that I can hit other eBook platforms, such as the Apple Bookstore, Kobo, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and so on. Finally I have an account with NaNoWriMo for moral support as I tackle writing the novel in November! (Do lurk!)

I’ll talk about each of these in dedicated posts as some, especially Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords, aren’t so simple for non-US writers such as yours truly.

3. K.B.O. – Which stands for Keep Buggering On! That is to say: Read! Write! Post! Blog! Don’t lose sight of what you are trying to achieve and, above all else, try to enjoy it. Unless you’re writing misery-lit, of course.

Okay, that’s a quick run through where I’ve been to get to this stage. I’ll add a few more posts shortly with more detail about self-publishing on Amazon, and the travails of a UK-based writer. The whole web presence thing is still a little rough around the edges so I’ll post other odds and sods as I iron them out.

Hope this helps!

A spot of premature e-publication

The Buskers' Union cover image — Oh my giddy aunt, I’m on Amazon…

When I published my last blog post I had no idea that within a week I’d be publishing one of my stories too! And yet there it is, “The Buskers’ Union”, available to purchase on Amazon for 99 cents.

Is it awesome to see it listed on there? Yes! Terrifying? Also yes! Planned? Not a bit. You could say I went off a bit early.

But why? I mean, the last time I blogged I was about to start sending stories to horror fiction magazines to try and get my name in print. Was it a fit of impatience? Could it have been a sudden, unquenchable desire to see my (assumed) name in print? Or was I just pandering to a massive ego trip?

In the end it was nothing like that. Instead it was all about placeholders.

You see, part of creating the Lucian Poll persona has involved registering accounts with a few sites, like Twitter and Goodreads. The theory is that, over time, I can use them to build a presence on the web that could attract readers and perhaps help me sell a story or two in the run up to publishing <Title Withheld> next September.

At the moment some of these accounts are placeholders, created simply so I can reserve the Lucian Poll name in advance. For example you can find me on Smashwords here, but at the moment there’s nothing much to see apart from a few words, a teaser for my novel and my calling card. In due course, however, I hope to put some stories on there, some freebies and maybe even the odd review. It’ll just take a little bit of time.

Anyway, next on my list of placeholders to create was a page on Amazon’s Author Central. I was half-surprised then to discover that, in order to create an author page for Lucian Poll, I had to publish something as Lucian Poll. That I did not anticipate.

(A little tangent, if I may. Unless I’m missing something major the honour system that Author Central operates is barmy! Part of the registration process requires you to put dibs on all of the books you have published. You’d never have thought that I wrote Moby Dick, did you?)

The last week has therefore been a bit frantic. I’ve had to pick a black comedy short story that I had planned to submit to Black Static (particularly after they published the very funny “Shark! Shark!” in issue 29). The story, however, needed a few extra drafts and a second pair of eyes on it. Then I had to create a cover in Inkscape (which looks okay, though it must be said the guitar has perhaps the worlds’ shortest fret board). With the story and cover done I then had to upload the book to Kindle Direct Publishing, preview the eBook and then, finally, pluck up the courage to hit the “Save and publish” button.

Bingo! One eBook for sale!

So it’s been a busy old time of late, but totally worth it. It felt blooming marvellous the first time I hit “Look Inside” and saw my cover fill the screen. (Having a humungous monitor helped!) While the story is something of a placeholder, it is nonetheless genuine. Give it a go and let me know what you think. It is my little tribute to all of Norwich’s terrible buskers, and the two or three good ones.

I’m still not sure about the apostrophe though…

Yay! My first rejection!

When reading the bios and the various “how I made it” stories of other writers, a common theme soon emerges. The rejection slip. They’ve all had them. Great big wads of them scattered around studies and offices, stuck on spikes, pinned to noticeboards, shoved in drawers, and filed in waste paper bins.

Some writers take rejections of their work badly, which is understandable if they have spent ages researching the subject(s) covered in their story, taken the time to draw together well-rounded and believable characters, painstakingly plotted a devilish story arc for them to follow, and then, after all that, wrung their OEDs dry polishing and perfecting every last sentence. To then have an editor, agent or publisher turn around and issue a form rejection with no feedback… well, you can imagine how said writer might get a wee bit tetchy.

On the other hand you have writers that are happy enough to get their work out there. They’ve probably got five story ideas bumping into each other for every one they manage to get onto paper. The rejection slips don’t really matter so long as they keep the faith that one day one story will make it into print. In the meantime the struggle is deciding which one to write next. Indeed I’ve read some writers’ desires to collect, say, a hundred rejection slips in a year, which I think is a great way of going about it.

(Just as an aside, I reckon I could do that quite easily. All I’d need to do is write a 5000 word horror equivalent of Finnegan’s Wake and send it to every publication on Duotrope. I can imagine the responses: “Dear author, Thank you for your submission but I regret to inform you we will not be considering your work for our upcoming Erotic LGBT Cthulhu Stories With Cake Recipes collection.”)

Anyway, blathering aside, this post is a means for me to record my first rejection email. Penny Fiction had an intriguing opening for thirteen-word flash fiction stories. (That’s intriguing in a “How on earth can you write a story in thirteen words?!?” kind of way.) But when I had spotted that “THIRTEEN WORDS” itself contains thirteen letters I quickly came up with a gruesome sentence using each letter and fired it off. Two-and-a-bit months later I get a reply to my original email.

It’s my first rejection.

You know what that means? That’s right, folks, someone has actually read something I wrote! Well, that wasn’t so difficult, and with a bona fide rejection I’m now in good company!

Lots of perfectly decent stories don’t make it into print for various reasons. Look at the submissions pages of your favourite fiction magazines and they often state they receive well over a hundred submissions for each story slot they have. Even after subtracting all the stories about torturing and butchering ex-girlfriends in freezing cold outhouses, the odds aren’t good.

But there is always a chance, and I’ve got the bug. It’s time to properly start chucking stories out there starting with Shroud Magazine, whose submissions window closes at the end of the month. I’ll submit a little cautionary tale about why you should always ask for ID when answering the front door, even if you were expecting “The Gas Man” to call…

The (re)start of something

The result of my first three hours of Inkscape. My calling card, if you will.

Around nine years ago my alter ego wrote a novel. A real 120,000 word monster, written just to see if it could be done. You won’t have read it. Only a few have and I’ve been apologising to them both ever since. I even feel sorry for the drawer it currently rests in. And so was scratched my brief (but fun) writing itch.

But now the itch has returned, and I don’t think a bath of camomile lotion is going to do the trick this time.

Often a writer is born through the stuff they read. Some plough through a bad book, hating every page and resolving to write something better. Others read a great book fizzing with energy and ideas, and BOOM! Suddenly they have a burning desire to get that silly story that’s been floating around their heads onto paper.

For me it was “Q” by Luther Blissett (or Wu Ming, these days), which, strangely enough, was a book that I had bought eight or nine years ago only for it to remain unread on my shelf until this summer. Who’d have thought a rip-snorting novel set in Reformation-era Europe would spawn an idea for a short sci-fi story? (Again, you won’t have seen it. Funny story about that. I’ll have to post something about it some time.)

It’s the start of something, or in my case a restart. One short story idea is followed by a couple more. Dreams start chipping in a few ideas too. And then, quite unexpectedly, you get THE idea. The big one. The one that leads to sleepless nights because your brain just won’t shut up about it. The one that has you frantically typing an 11,000 word plot outline in two days before you forget it all.

You’ve probably guessed by now that I’ve had what I deem to be THE idea. My one half-decent shot at writing something good; good enough perhaps to be read by others without apologising for it afterwards. (Something that I’m astonished hasn’t been done before, or not to my knowledge.)

Hence this blog, this domain name, this pseudonym, that Facebook page, that Twitter account, and so on and so forth. Sometimes you just feel that you’ve got to give it a shot. Write the damn thing. Put it out there and be judged by it. (Even if it is behind a pseudonym.)

So come NaNoWriMo I’ll turn my 11,000 word outline into a 50,000+ word novel. You might even see me slaving away at one of the Norwich write-ins. Then I’ll knock out a second draft, then I’ll have it properly proof-read, and then finally, after all that slog, after annoying everyone I know with THE idea, I’ll put it out there. On Kindle, through Smashwords, via every channel I can find.

So that’s the gauntlet slapped down. As I finish my inaugural post on this blog my deadline for publishing <Title withheld> is exactly one year from today: Friday 13th September 2013.

I’ll let you know how I get on.