[AmsterdamAssassin]

I don't know if Joe is going to chime up here, but Jane Dystal has been his agent for ages. Joe self-published his work, using Carl Graves and Jeroen ten Berge for covers and Rob at 52novels for formatting. I think Jane has come across the idea that brokering services that Joe uses to ignorant self-publishers is a money making scheme.

If you have trouble self-publishing, give me 15% for life and I'll send your work to Rob, Carl and Jeroen. I'll forward you the invoices. And I'll just send the whole package to D2D and have them publish it to all platforms. For an extra fee I can even set up your account with iTunes, Kobo and Amazon.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

It would be worth it if the e-stributor takes the word/epub file and fronts all the costs and does all the work in bringing the novel to the customers. That means, e-stributor pays for editing, formatting, cover art, etcetera. If I have to pay for that myself, finding editors, formatters, cover artists, etcetera could be done for a flat fee, not a 15% in perpuity.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

From my research, it's not a tax scam. There are a number of tax treaties between the United States and other countries that do NOT require the 30% withholding. Should have clarified that. But, Amazon will not get down to the individual's country of origin, and I understand as that's an accounting nightmare, so the author is the one out the money all year long until they get it back from the IRS in a refund. There's an IRS publication on the whole list and percentages and which countries are exempt what and on what kinds of businesses etc. It's not fun to read and interpret.

There are ways to legally work around this that isn't scamming taxes, but requires a good deal of legwork and paperwork Amazon just isn't going to do on an individual author basis. It's not required that all foreign nationals in business have 30% of their earnings withheld, it's just Amazon CYA.

I only know this because I've played this role for other authors in the past, ethically, but ultimately decided 10% wasn't worth the headache to me for what's involved accounting wise.

I'm Dutch and I figured it out quite easily.

A) Get an EIN
B) Fill out a W-8BEN and sent it to Amazon accounting.

From then on, Amazon is aware of your tax exempt status and will transfer 100% of the royalties to you. Not quite the administrative nightmare alluded to above.

Again, both SW and D2D take 15% if I'm not mistaken and don't offer anything more, yet lots of writers use them without reservation, more or less, (and I don't remember seeing a specific royalty distribution schedule in the article - 15% of what?).

I gather the reason people go with SW and D2D is not because they can't figure out how to upload to KDP. I'm with D2D for B&N, because as a non-US resident I cannot upload to B&N myself. I upload my books to Kobo, KDP, and iTunes, but iTunes is also a reason for many authors to go with D2D because iTunes can only be uploaded through iTunesProducer, which runs on Macs, not on PC. There is a workaround for that, but many authors find it easier to upload to an aggregator and leave it to them.

I would've gone with SW if not for their pesky Word files and Meatgrinder issues (I don't write in Word), so when D2D appeared with the possibility to upload epub and distribute to B&N I joined them. 85% of something is better than 100% of nothing.