Book Publishers, Non-American Authors and the IRS

If you self-publish your books (whether eBooks or physical books) using an American publisher (Amazon, Smashwords, CreateSpace or whoever) it may be a surprise for you to learn that the American tax office (the IRS) requires the company you publish with to withhold 30% of your royalty earnings. Yes, that's right, non-American authors who publish with Amazon or any other American company will have 30£ of their royalties withheld directly by the IRS. This is a big chunk of money to lose every month, especially by a foreign tax office (and you still have to pay income tax at home). But all is not lost. Most countries have a tax agreement with the USA and if you take a few simple steps you can stop the IRS from robbing you blind. What you need to do is to get a tax identification number from the IRS. Not being an American citizen, this can either be an ITIN (individual tax identification number) or an EIN (employer's identification number). Now, any American reading this will be stunned that an individual can get an EIN, because domestically, these are always reserved for limited companies. For non-Americans though, these numbers can be used by a sole trader — a category into which authors fall. Now the ITIN process requires that you send your passport and a letter from your employer (Amazon or whoever in this case) to the USA or to an American embassy in your home country. This is because these numbers are intended for individuals and the IRS needs to confirm who you are. But, not being an American you can apply for an EIN number and the application for this is much more straightforward, as you do not need an ID. Indeed, all you need to do is to call a specific number at the IRS which directly issues EINs for foreign applicants only. It might sound an expensive process, as you are calling the US, but if you use Skype you can keep the costs down and you will have the all-important number by the end of the call. The number I used was +12679411099 and though I had to wait almost 30 minutes to get a reply, the woman who eventually answered took me through the entire application process. By the end of the call I was told my EIN and I was sent a letter to confirm, which arrived a few weeks later. Now that I had my tax ID I could get form W8-BEN, which is available for download from Amazon and CreateSpace. I filled this in and mailed it (you need to send a wet ink copy) to the address Amazon provided (the address is available form the self publishing help pages). A few weeks later and I received an eMail from Amazon saying that everything was in order and that I would no longer have any tax withheld from the US side. And once you have your EIN you can use it with anyone you publish with in the US. A single phone call (which cost less than 50p with Skype) and a few letters and I saved a huge chunk of money. It really is easy and there is absolutely no reason for you to let the US IRS keep any of your hard-earned royalties. What I am surprised is that most of the information on the web talks about the ITIN number, which is a rather involved process, when for anyone not an US citizen getting an EIN is a much, much, easier process.

Print on Demand?

This evening I've been looking at Amazon's CreateSpace (www.createspace.com) publishing solution. Basically, if you have a fully-formatted PDF of your bok, in the correct format you can use the self-publishing system and get them to print your book on a publish on demand basis.

If you can do all the work yourself (format the book, design the cover art) then this costs you nothing. Of course, the price of the book is based on the number of pages and whether it is colour or not.

I've been looking at a book format of about 7.5 x 9.25 inches and around 400 pages (depending on how I format it. If sold for $19.99 this would give just over $6 in revenue for every copy sold. The price CreateSpace charge being based on page number. Fewer page numbers means you can sell the book cheaper.

Being an InDesign user, this is much more familiar territory for me (I was an editor in a former life) and I know how to produce book-quality InDesign layouts. Currently I'm thinking of a layout using Times New Roman at about 11.5pt with embedded images (not that there are many).

The book I am going to start with is my Big Book of Curry recipes, which is currently by ar my biggest seller on the Kindle ebook store (you can find the Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families on Amazon and you can also find Eliza Acton's Modern Cookery for Private Families on Amazon.co.uk).  Indeed, it's been the success of this book on the Kindle platform that has made me decide to go the print on demand route.Especially as I think a recipe book may well do better as a physical book.

Of course, I already have all the text and the links etc, but the image placements will need to be re-formated and because physical books do not re-flow like eBooks, page breaks will need to be taken care of. My current layout is A5, so I need to change that. And the links will need to go to page numbers and not be hyperlinks. But that's easy.

There is probably about a week's work in all and then the book will be ready for purchase on Amazon.

The publishing adventure continues!

The Basics of eBook Publishing

Following on from my guide to writing a book proposal, for publishing a print (ie dead tree) book, here is a guide for those who want to publish their book via the electronic book route.

Thanks in the main to devices such as Kindle, Nook and the iPad eBooks (electronic books) have had massive growth in the past few years, growth that shows little evidence of abating... which is good news for prospective authors.

Still, this the whole eBook publishing area is a bit of a minefield as there is no standardization in terms of devices and formats. ePub, an open standard is the most common and most devices will read it. This is the format that smashwords sells.

In terms of the big book sites, in the US at least, Amazon has 60% of the market, Barnes and Noble has 30% of the market and Apple has the remaining 10% (with a few other smaller markets filling in the cracks).

Anyway, that is the basic background. Whatever else you do, you need to writer your book. I would recommend that you ALWAYS, always, write your book with a physical publisher in mind. After all, this ensures that your book is the highest quality and even if you publish an eBook first you can still publish your own print version with a print on demand service and you can also send your book as a proposal to agents and publishers (just be sure to retain the electronic publishing rights for yourself).

Do this properly, with an introduction, table of contents and an index at the back. These are always good signs of a well-written and thought out book

Once your book is written (and I would recommend using Word or a compatible word processor for this) you will need to format it for the various eBook readers. Smashwords (smashwords.com) has an excellent service for doing this from Word, which covers most formats (but not Amazon). Now, you can do this yourself, or you can search smashwords for people who will do this for you (prices range from $65 to $150 and times range from a few days to a few weeks). Just remember you are paying for a formating service and not an editing service. For eBooks you will need to edit the book and any images yourself (there are editing services available, but expect to pay something in the order of $1200).

You now have an eBook ready, formated and exported in a range of formats. Whilst you are doing this, don't forget to export a PDF of your book and also format the first 50 pages or so as an excerpt.

Don't forget to create a cover for your book. This is another good sign of a properly produced book. Again you can do this yourself if you have some skill with photoshop or other image-editing software or you can, once again, pay to have it done for you.

The first part of your eBook is done. In the next part, we will look at Amazon and getting your book published (rights, pricing and getting it in on-line stores).

Practising what I preach

Over the past couple of days I have been busy putting the finishing touches on two chapters that I am going to use as the basis for a new book proposal.

Over the past few years (quite a few in fact) I have been busy putting my Guide to Wild Foods on-line. This is has been a labour of love, with over 140 wild (or introduced and naturalized) plant species listing, all provided with descriptions of the plants and their edible parts and recipes.

I have thousands of recipes associated with these various wild edible plants. I've now separated them into categories based on the type of environment they grow in: farmland, woodland, scrubland, marine, sea shore etc and the new book will have chapters based on these.

Over the past couple of days I wrote sample chapters for the Trees and Introduced Plants from that list, with full descriptions of the plants and between five or six recipes for each plant.

Those chapters need a little updating ,but they are there now. The next step is to use the Guide to Writing a Book Proposal that I have published here in this blog to actually write the proposal for the book I am planning: The Guide to Wild Foods.

The aim is to get this proposal done by the end of the weekend and to submit the proposal to a range of editors and publishers at the beginning of next week.

I will be back with more information on how that process progresses, along with further information on how you can turn what you have written (whether to a website a blog or anywhere) into a publication (either for conventional print or for eBooks).

As always, the important thing is to get into the practice of writing. The more you write and the more often, then the more you will have to sell.

The Research Section

Today is a bonus post.

For all writers of technical books... whether historic, scientific, academic or literary, then to write such books you will need to have done some research. This is your chance to show an agent or publisher that you have done extensive research and that your book is authoritative.

In this section you should briefly describe the bounds of your book (if you are writing about recipes from 1660 to 1760, state that). Now list your main sources. These can be libraries, book collections, books and websites. Think of anything that you would list in the references section of your book and list the main ones.

If there are any salient points garnered from your research, particularly if noteworthy, then describe these in this section.

If possible link this to the 'about the author' section. After all, if you are an expert in what you are writing about then your research will be more authoritative and your book or book proposal is far more likely to be picked up.

Do not go overboard on this section, just use it to show that you have done your research properly and that the book you are writing is based around this research.

Back to the Introduction on Writing a Book Proposal.

Querying a Literary Agent

The title of this post may be a little strange if you are outside the publishing biz... but an approach to a literary agent is termed a 'query'.

The truth is, though you can approach publishers directly, as an author you will really need a literary agent in your corner. An agent is a publishing insider. They know the market and they know the publishers. They can get you larger advances and they know which publishers will be the best for your book.

To select a literary agent you need to chose one that covers the topics that you are writing about. This improves your chances of a literary agent being interested in you. And because that literary agent specializes in your type of literature they will know the appropriate editors in the right publishing houses to actually get your book published.

Before you query a literary agent you should already have written your book proposal... just do not send it to the agent directly.

You need to first query an agent, to see if they want to read your book proposal. When approaching a literary agent, keep it simple... But your query still has to be perfect in all respects.

It should contain three sections: an introductory paragraph about your book; a paragraph listing your credentials and prior publications (if you have them); and a concluding paragraph that should simply ask whether the agent would like to receive your book proposal.

Of course, before this you need to find a literary agent to query in the first place. You need to do your research here. Search on-line and use various books about agents and publishing. Publishers Weekly is also an excellent source of information. There are hundreds of agents out there, but only a small section of these will handle your type of book.

If you choose agents that do not deal with your subject matter you will be rejected out of hand. But if you do your research properly then you already have a leg-up compared with other authors. If you are approaching your first agent then I would suggest narrowing your list down to 10 to 15 of the best options and sending your query (just the query, not your book proposal) to all of them.

If you have done your selection properly then you would expect responses from at least a couple of them asking for your book proposal (And if you have followed the other posts on this blog your proposal will be tip-top).

This is a lot of work, I know... but at least all agents these days accept emails so you can have everything ready in a weekend if you really want to.

Send those emails off and sit back in hope... the hope that soon you will be well on your way to getting published.

On to the next part: Writing the Research Section for technical and factual authors.
Back to the Introduction on Writing a Book Proposal.

Writing the Sample Chapters

This, of course, is a very important part of any book proposal as it shows your writing style to the publisher. Basically these sample chapters show that you can actually write and that you have a grasp of your subject matter.

Typically you would include two or three chapters from the middle of the book. The introduction is never included as this is both deemed too introductory and it is usually only written when the remainder of the book is done. Depending on your book's subject the first chapter might not be suitable either as this may be introductory as well (but it depends on the subject matter).

If your final chapter is conclusory in nature then including this is also a good idea. But, again, this will depend on the subject matter of your book.

For my first book proposal, I did not include complete chapters (as to do so would have meant writing the whole book before the proposal). Rather, I made selections from the contents of the first, second and third chapters that showed the contents, how the text would be laid out and revealed my style. For this book, which gave an ancient text and its translation using the standard sample chapter system was not suitable.

But whatever you do, make certain that you include sufficient text for your aims and your writing style to be evident. Just make certain that what you write is vibrant and that your personality comes through, as this is one of the distinguishing features of any book.


Congratulations, you have just written your first book proposal. If you went through this guide then you will have found out that it's not as onerous as many make it out to be. And keeping it structured actually helps you in the writing.

Print the text out, write your cover letter and send it off to your prospective publisher of agent and wait.

In the next (and final) section we will take a look at how to approach a literary agent.

Good luck to you in your publishing efforts!

On to the next part: Querying a Literary Agent.
Back to the Introduction on Writing a Book Proposal.