Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Taxes, Interviews, and Positive Thinking.

First I would like to let everyone know that Action Adventure Inc Blog has a short interview posted about myself and my first book Requiem.  It is interesting to read it myself even though I answered the questions only 21 days ago.  When you are learning and growing as an indie author, your perspective changes almost daily with each new experience or lesson learned.  At the one year mark, I will have to go back and re-read my blog and comment about what I see and how I changed as an author and person.  I found this picture to be funny after searching Google for "interview".  The desk lamp looks like it has been stabbed into the guys neck and the girl reminds me of MTV's Daria trying to figure out what is going on with her classic strait face.


Taxes taxes taxes.  Well, the bright side to taxes is that if you have to pay them, then you made money.  So I should look forward to the time every quarter when I have to sit down and do taxes.  The taxes today is for sales tax.  When I set up SBJones Publishing, I needed a sales and use tax permit number and one of those tax exemption numbers you need to buy things without tax.  This was something that was required when I set up my Lightning Source account for the paperback book.  This lets me order my own book and not pay taxes on them, but I have to collect it from my customers.  I purposely priced my book to $14.15 so it comes to an even $15 when I sell it online through my blog, or in person at a book signing or other encounter.  I don't have to worry about sales tax on books sold through B&N or Amazon because they are responsible for sales tax and all I get is a commission subject to income tax.  I know some of you are wondering how much taxes I have to pay.  Are you ready?  I have to send in a total of $31.45 of collected sales tax this quarter.  Between my two book signings, blog sales, and other paperback sales, I personally sold 37 paperback copies of Requiem.  If you want, you can always hit that "Buy it Now" button on the right and add to my tax burden if you want.



So the other day I was drinking beer with my editor and she was complaining about the fee's involved with having a VISA machine.  I had to agree, they were depressing and that is why I am a big fan of Square.  Then there were the complaints about banking fees.  Again I had to agree.  Once the rant was finished I said.  I can only hope one day that the fee's and limitations become an issue.  In fact, they should be goals you try to attain. For example, if you exceed $5,000 sales in a single day.  Square will only deposit a maximum of $5,000.  You will have to wait a day to get the rest.

Oh darn.  The day I sell 334 or more books in one book signing or event to break the $5,000 mark and I have to wait an extra day to see the rest of my cash is one I can't wait to happen.  And if it becomes to big of a hassle, you can call Square and explain and they will raise this limit.  The day I have to call Square because cash is so backed up that $5,000 a day just isn't enough to get caught up is another happy day.

My bank has a similar setup.  Cash deposits of $5,000 or more are subject to a fee.  Guess I will just deposit $4,999 and come back the next day to deposit the rest.  What a rough life it would be to have to visit the bank every day to make a $5,000 cash deposit.

So with that good news, I have to do some self promoting here.  That spike in sales I talked about last time after I had my book signing.  Requiem came so so close to breaking into the top 10,000 of the Amazon ranking. 10,630 is where it topped out at.  My bingo card has a square on it that says its under 9,000 on it.  (a joke for the it's over 9,000 meme).  That square is going to get crossed off!

Congratulations to the latest winners of the Requiem eBook a Day Giveaway.  It's almost over with only three more to give out so time is running out if you haven't signed up.


Sept 23 Mav
Sept 24 Kathy Jones
Sept 25 Andy Maestas
Sept 26 Kim Miller
Sept 27 Purna Thanandabouth

5 comments:

  1. Now that's what I call having a positive outlook :-)

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  2. Will check out your interview. Your attitude never ceazes to amaze me :)

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  3. @Sarah- It's all how you look at things.

    @Rachna- Thanks.

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  4. Hello,
    first of all thanks a lot for sharing valuable information whit us.

    I have a question.
    I would like to open an account with LS (I have my ISBN's and book ready to publish)I'm outside the US.
    But I don't want to deal with tax issues.
    Did I understand that right... If I don't want to deal with tax issues I need to open account in LS as a NOT RESELLER?
    I mean only "re-sellers" like you need to deal with taxes?
    Thanks a lot. I have been looking for an answer to this question for a long time.

    thanks again

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  5. Lightning Source is a print company that is part of Ingram. If you allow them, they will put your book in their catalog. Anyone who has access to this catalog can order your book and sell it. Companies like Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Books-a-million, Hastings etc. If anyone buys a book through one of these re-sellers, you will get a check from Lightning Source for the retail price, minus the wholesaler discount, minus print costs.

    You will owe income tax on this money. In the US it will be in the form of a 1099. You will still owe whatever other taxes like Social Security, Medicare or whatever your country also taxes you on.

    Now you can opt out of the catalog an only you can order books. This will simply cost you whatever the printing and shipping costs are. However if you sell any, you will still owe income and whatever taxes AND (in the US depending on the state) sales tax.

    There is no getting away from taxes unless you spend more than you make, but if you are doing that, then you will fail. In the US even if you spend more than you make, you will still owe Sales Tax, Social etc.

    The only taxes you can "get away" from is sales tax. Only the person or company that actually sells the book to a customer has to collect it.

    ReplyDelete