Why Does Amazon Still Pay Some KDP Authors By Check?
Update note: This article is now quite dated. However, there are still countries affected by check payments. Therefore, this article remains online for reference value only.
It really is time for Amazon to enter the 21st century.
I earn a lot of my living online. That means I get paid from a whole range of sources.
All except one company operates in this century. I get paid by Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) or Paypal by all of them, except for parts of Amazon.
Why checks?
Amazon has infuriated Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and Createspace authors for years by insisting on payment by check or cheque.
It is not only old-fashioned, but it is also slow and expensive. (I will use check instead of cheque for this article for simplicity.)
For authors who live in Australia, Canada, South Africa and so many other countries that are outside the US and the EU, getting paid by check by Amazon is inexcusable in today’s world.
Amazon is one of the tech giants. Surely it can’t be too difficult to offer EFT, can it?
It can’t be financial regulation or rules, because Google manages to pay me by EFT every month without any problem at all for book sales and Adsense income.
For KDP self-publishers who get paid by check, they have to pay a bank charge to deposit an Amazon check. This charge can range from the equivalent of $10 – $30 depending on the bank and country.
One can probably presume that the costs for Amazon are higher for a check than EFT.
On top of that, these authors have to wait to accumulate sales royalties of $100, or more for some Amazon stores such as the UK, Canada, Germany, and France.
It is all, well, dumb, crazy, unfair, and old hat. It is about as silly as being notified of your monthly book sales, by telegram.
Stop the rip off Amazon! Get real.
My earlier article referred to Createspace and how it was ripping off authors.
But nothing has changed with the closure of Createspace. KDP is still as bad, and totally unfair and discriminating against non-US and UK authors.
In my own case, I am a little fortunate. I get paid by EFT by Amazon for my KDP sales.
However, my Amazon Associates account is still paid by an old-fashioned check. If you think KDP is bad, only US Amazon Associates have access to EFT payments. It is not even available for EU countries.
What can you do?
There is little one can do to move a dinosaur.
But if you kick its tail often enough, the message might one day get to its head.
In the case of Amazon, the best you can do is keep sending contact messages and complaining about the unfairness. It took six years, but it worked in the end with Createspace.
But don’t hold your breath.
But I have tried.
An open letter to:
Mr. Jeff P. Bezos
President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board
Amazon.com
Dear Jeff,
Without you, and Amazon, self-publishing, print on demand, and ebooks would not exist today in the book market. Nor would the opportunity for almost anyone on the planet to exercise their want to write what they truly believe in, and have the opportunity to be read.
It matters not how many copies are sold, nor how many people read each book, nor whether a book is free or not. What matters is that Amazon and Kindle Direct Publishing have empowered writers and at the same time, given readers a choice, which whether they understand or not, they did not have before Amazon self-publishing.
Even given that ebooks have become almost mainstream now and that there are many players in the ebook retailing market, it is always Amazon who has led the way in innovation.
As so often happens with innovation, though, there are those who resist or argue against change, but without evolution, improvement, trial and almost inevitably the occasional error or two, progress cannot be made.
From the advent of KDP to KDP Select exclusivity, to Kindle Unlimited, and now to pay-per-page royalties, no one can argue that Amazon is not at the forefront of innovating in both self-publishing and publishing as a modern industry.
In fact, in my personal opinion, Amazon is the only self-publishing company that is daring to innovate, change, and improve so willingly.
Digital products such as music, film, and video have proven over many years to be a challenge to market, so, therefore, ebooks are no different. A digital file is a digital file. However, when viewed in perspective, Amazon and ebooks must rate as one of the most outstanding success stories in digital delivery and sales.
For this, every self-publishing author should recognize Amazon’s amazing commitment to self-publishing and in Amazon sharing this success with authors.
Except for one very important issue, Jeff.
While self-publishing on Amazon, though, either Kindle Direct Publishing or Createspace is available to almost any writer anywhere in the world, the fairness of paying royalties to authors is definitely not. It’s time to pay all authors fairly.
While authors in the US, UK and a few European countries enjoy royalty payments every month by Electronic Funds Transfer for any accrued amount, a whole other world of authors is penalized by having to accrue either $100, £100, or EUR100 and then be paid by check, which is then subject to bank fees to clear for payment.
Depending on the bank and country, this can be from 5% to 10% of the check’s value.
Not only that but for authors, who may sell only a few copies of books in certain countries, this limitation can mean that they may not see their due royalties for years.
In addition to this problem, Createspace pays by EFT to far fewer countries than KDP. As both are Amazon companies, I for one I cannot understand why this problem has existed for so many years. In my reading of the community forum on Createspace, this inequity has existed for six years now.
In comments I received on my blog posts on these subjects, I was very surprised to read that even authors in Australia and Canada suffer from payment issues from both Createspace and KDP.
This is not a fair situation. I know many, many self-published authors have contacted Amazon either directly or via Amazon Community Forums regarding this issue for a very long time now, but very little positive action has been taken by Amazon.
For all that you have done so brilliantly for self-publishing, thank you Jeff, but I ask you to extend your innovation, ingenuity, ongoing improvement, and commitment to all authors, and not only those who luckily reside in one of the very few selected countries.
If an author can self-publish on Amazon, and then sell books or ebooks that make a profit for Amazon, surely they all should be paid for their work – fairly, equally, and as promptly.
Thank you again for all your achievements in self-publishing, but I hope this one important issue of fairness to a world of Amazon self-published authors will warrant your personal attention.
Sincerely yours,
Derek Haines
If you are a self-publishing author, who agrees that Amazon should act to ensure all self-published authors are paid equally, fairly, and promptly, please send your thoughts to Mr. Jeff Bezos by email – [email protected]
The earlier story
I am leaving the contents of the earlier article that pertained to check payments by Createspace to set the historical background to Amazon’s reluctance to embrace EFT payments.
Some of the information is of course dated, but it is relevant to the current reluctance of Amazon to offer EfT payments to more countries.
The comments at the end of the article are also an illustration of the frustration felt by authors.
If you are a self-published author, who has the misfortune to reside outside the US or the UK, or a small handful of selected European countries, and publish paperbacks on Createspace, you will know that Createspace treats international authors in general like, well, there’s no other word, so why should I censor this?
Createspace treats most of their international authors like shit, as they have ripped them off for a very long time.
If you live for example in Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, India, or like me in Switzerland, Createspace does not offer electronic payment of royalties (EFT), and will only pay by check for royalty balances over US$100, £100 or Euro 100.
This is archaic, discriminatory, and close to predatory.
For EFT, where it is offered, the minimum payments are US$10! (Update: There is now no limit, so all balances are paid in full each month by EFT.)
Not only are these balances uneven, as US$100 is only worth about half of £100, paying by check means that authors suffer from bank clearance fees, so they lose a lot on the deal.
In my case, every US$100 check I receive costs me $10 to clear. With EFT, there are no charges whatsoever. This is UNFAIR!
Createspace has done nothing in six years, except to make false promises.
Now, if this were a new problem it wouldn’t be so bad, but Createspace has been promising to address this issue for over six years, as their Community message boards on this subject prove.
But nothing has been done, except for Createspace to keep making as yet unfulfilled promises.
I sent yet another message only yesterday about this unfair situation, and received the same stock standard reply I have been receiving for years, in that Createspace value their customers and are working on it! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let’s get something clear.
Createspace is an Amazon company. Amazon KDP has no problem at all in paying by EFT to authors in most countries, but for some unfathomable reason, Createspace can’t manage to do it.
Worse still is that Createspace is sitting on a huge pile of unpaid royalties that have not managed to get to the minimum amounts payable by check. So how many books do I sell in France, Spain, and Germany? A few, but at my current balance of around Euro 20, I’ll be waiting ten years to see a check.
I imagine a lot of authors have similar outstanding balances. But if EFT were available, I would have been paid already. Theft? Hoarding? Stupidity? Ineptitude? Whichever, it amounts to a lot of money Createspace is sitting on that should be paid to authors!
This is not an isolated problem either, as I have written before about International Self-Publishing Hurdles, and Is Self-Publishing Only For Americans?. If you are not American, you are almost always at a disadvantage in one way or another with Amazon.
If you are an Amazon Associates member, for example, there is the same $100 minimum problem for non-US residents, but at least Amazon Associates offer an Amazon Gift card for balances over $10. Not a fantastic solution, but it is more than Createspace can manage to do.
If you are an international self-published author, who is suffering from the reluctance of Createspace to change their discriminatory payment options, all I can suggest is hitting them with a message every month, complaining about the unfairness of their payment system.
Mind you, on their Community Boards; this topic has been hit by the same complaints since two thousand and nine! That’s only 7 years!
Amazon is a company that started with books and still owes a lot of its success to books and ebooks. But isn’t it high time that it treated (all) their authors with a little more fairness?
Notes
Footnote: Since writing this post, Createspace finally acted after six years and now offers EFT payments to a few more countries.
Update: I have filed this article as Dated due to the fact that Amazon KDP now offers easy paperback publishing, which overcomes the Createspace EFT payment problems for almost all authors.
Update 2: There is news speculation that Createspace will be closing down. This might be the right time to move your paperback POD self-publishing to KDP.
Update 3: We have published a new article explaining how to move your existing Createspace paperback titles to Amazon KDP.
Update 4: Amazon announces it is taking over media production from Createspace.
Update 5: Amazon Associates has come out of the cave and announced that direct deposit EFT payments are available now for a limited number of countries outside the US. See the list below.
MEGA problems with KDP EFT payments. BEWARE
As an author publishing newly with KDP, I was happy to get an email telling me that a payment was on the way ! Great, I thought. All my first month’s royalties coming along. Then I opened the payment info and saw a payment for the equivalent of about 0.20 USD ! Yes, I repeat, KDP were sending an EFT for the equivalent of 20 US cents !
Then next day it was a payment from Japan, for KOLL reads. Value in USD 0.01 USD. KDP had sent of an international EFT for one cent ! I couldn’t believe it! Banks worldwide charge their customers to receive EFTs…. mine charges a minimum of about 40 dollars per transfer.. peanuts if it’s for 10000 bucks, but totally ridiculous if its for a payment of 0.01 USD.
KDP must know that banks charge their customers, but they carry on regardless.
EFT is great ! Yes; but not the way KDP/Amazon do it.
Take care, authors. If one person happens to buy your book on some distant Amazon market in a month, you’ll lose a lot of money. Unless you tell them to hold payments (which you can do) KDP’ll send you an EFT payment for even just one cent… even though they have to know that this is going to cost you a lot of money in bank charges.
Removing minimum EFT thresholds was NOT a good idea for people who sell on all amazon markets, unless you want to pay more in bank charges than you receive in royalties from some Amazon markets.
I have to say that I have never been charged by my bank for even the smallest payment from Amazon. I regularly get very small payments from some international Kindle Stores. I really think you should check with your bank. If you are being charged $40.00 to receive a payment, something is really wrong with your bank. I don’t see this as an Amazon problem.
Interesting. Ill keep this thread updated when the payments actually get through. Maybe the guys at KDP help don’t know exactly how EFT payments work … which is maybe not too surprising.
In the end, this was a false alarm.
the EFT payments were in fact all made from the same Amazon account located in my currency area, and were converted before sending, so came as local electronic transfers and were not subject to any charges.
The problem arose from confusion in the terms used by Amazon/KDP . What they call an EFT payment is actually a BACS payment in the UK or a SEPA payment in the Eurozone – neither of which incur charges. If the terms BACS and SEPA had been used from the outset, I’d never have worried (apart from the actual sense of sending a payment of less than 10p or 10c).
As my original post was a false alarm, it would be good to delete it as it does not add anything of use to this discussion.
I’m still haggling with the Kdp customer care over my first check payment of UK sales.
They say it’s delivered when actually it hasn’t! When I raise query they Just ask to void the check and reissue another.
Does anyone have any advice?
I have had this issue a few times over the years with KDP. I have always received a replacement check. So it should be okay. But it is much better if you have the option to get your payments from KDP by electronic transfer.
Totally agree. I had a dreadful experience publishing my first book with them, so many errors. Then I discovered I would probably never get my royalties as they are spread across several domains. After I threatened to write an article on just this issue I immediately had a phone call from some supervisor trying to smooth my very ruffled feathers and promising that Amazon were thinking of reviewing the policy. Yeahhhh right.
Perhaps it’s time for a class action lawsuit, where ALL of Amazon’s ripped off authors together might have enough power to get Jeff’s attention? The combined slush fund of all those under $100 thresholds must be a massive pile of cash they are sitting and earning interest on. Surely, this dodgy from some legal aspect. Time to unite?
This isn’t just a problem for international authors. And why move to Amazon KDP when it can’t manage CreateSpace?
Hi,
The story above states when I first hired Booksurge/Ingram in 2008. The books were brand new books. I have the copyright and LSI/Booksurge contracts so no this is very illegal
Some Canadian banks now have “partnered” US banks. I opened an account with a US bank from Canada. They sent me a package of blank cheques, which I can either cash at my CDN partner bank (need an account there to do that), or deposit in my own credit union. There are several Canadian banks that now have US partners. They also gave me a debit card, so I can withdraw cash from ATMs when I visit the US.
There are several CDN banks who have partners, now. You can also go through a money brokerage like Knightsbridge FX.
It’s a lot easier than coping with Createspace’s lost cheques and watching other countries’ royalties sit below the pay out threshold for months.
I just set up a Createspace account and was shocked that they don’t provide EFT for Canadians. What Canadian banks are partnered with a US bank? I was told I would have to go to the US to open an account if I wanted EFT.
I would suggest using KDP for paperbacks. There has been a lot of news about Createspace scaling back or closing down. And, KDP offers EFT payment to Canada, I believe.
Thanks, Derek. I was just looking into it based on your article. Unfortunately it isn’t available to Canada, from what I understand.
I have heard a lot about problems with Amazon EFT payments from Canadian authors. It really is so unfair. You could try Draft2digital. They can publish paperback and pay by Paypal. Perhaps an option for you.
I published my book “Autobiography of a Hippie” with LULU back in 2007, and over the years I‘ve noticed a virtual feeding frenzy by Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online distributors of listings for my book for sale, both new and used. and always in substantial numbers (more than 50 available, etc) yet LULU has claimed that in the last 10+ years, I’ve sold less than 20 books altogether; according to them! Now the used books available online outnumber that by several times, especially when looking at international sales, and they always listed new books available in large numbers too. When I confronted LULU, they replied; “we are a print on demand publisher, so Amazon can list as many as they please, and when they receive orders, we will print them; as for the used books available, anyone can resell their books after reading them” …but how does that explain a used book count that far outnumbers the alleged sales? Is someone else printing and selling my book besides LULU? If so, that would be illegal, and shouldn’t LULU be on top of that to protect one of their authors? Unless, of course, LULU is in collusion with Amazon and others, and especially considering that Amazon has it’s own in-house printing service, it’s easy to see that if LULU gave them the files and rights to print my book, they’d need not have to pay me a dime, and simply split the profits with LULU. When I confronted Amazon with this; they said it was LuLu’s responsibility to pay me my revenues, and when I turned to LULU, they replied that all sales made outside of LULU, would have to paid by the retailer selling the books; similar to the notorious old “Tweed Ring” of some criminal politicians back in the late 1800s; who’d point the finger at the next guy, and that one pointed to the next one, and so on. I see the same thing happening with my music posted online for sale at Reverbnation and elsewhere. You’d think that after 5 years of more than 50 tunes posted, at least one of them would have sold for a lousy dollar, but according to Reverbnation; nothing has sold, NOTHING! Now how in the world can I know if that’s really true or not, as several of my songs have gone viral with a following on the internet radio, so certainly someone should have liked at least one enough to pay $1 for a download copy. You see how it is; the online retailers are in the “driver’s seat” with total control, and there’s no way of really knowing just how many copies were actually sold; unless they are forced to open their books to an IRS audit; to reveal actual sales, we are simply out of luck! Indy authors, musicians and artists like myself ; need to form a class action against the big rip-off corporations and demand justice in a court of law; that’s the only thing that will get their attention! Meanwhile, the story of my youth is being profited on by many others; but not the one who wrote the story; me! I am ready to give my book away for free just to take the wind out of the sails (and sales) of the corporate giants, but actually another one has already done that; Google. Sadly, when I published my book, Google contacted me with an offer to list my book with them in “Google Book Search” and as I thought that meant simply listing it in their search engine, I accepted their offer, not realizing that it would mean that Google would essentially place my entire book up online for anyone to read; nearly in it’s entirety, with only a few pages deleted here and there, so why buy a book, that one could essentially read for free!?! I think I need a really good pro-bono lawyer to help me with all of this, as I sure can’t afford to pay someone to fight the corporate lawyers Amazon and others have at their disposal; know anyone?
Weird! I’m in Australia and got paid for one book recently. I have a Payoneer account for all Amazon & Createspace payments though. Is that the difference?
Glad to hear it said yet again. I wrote about this bogus issue over a year ago. I sent them numerous emails numerous times. Still nothing. I’m Canadian, part of North America and treated as though I’m from a third world country.
I have heard that Canada gets a rough deal from Createspace too, as well as some parts of Amazon KDP, like Kindle Scout. Crazy. So much for a globalised economy huh?
Dear all;
Amazon looks at the rest of world as one country.
Amazon has no problem receiving digital payments from all countries, including Africa. However, when it comes to paying royalties Amazon considers such countries digitally nonexistent. Why should a conglomerate receive digital money from from one country and choose to pay Stone Age money to these countries?
Check payments are pre-historic, even in Africa.
Amazing how a conglomerate like Amazon still wants to operate at levels below banks in Africa.
A South African bank refuses to clear checks from Amazon because:
-clearance costs are more than values of the checks issued by Amazon
-all banks in Africa are moving, or have moved away form using checks for international payments.
It would make a lot of sense if an American bank was rejecting a check payment from a company in Africa.
Wake Amazon.com, even African banks are dumping the check book and all gone digital. We believe that Amazon.com is not operating form the Amazon rain forests but from the clouds; is it not time Amazon and Createspace started taking EFT instead of CHECK BOOK?
EFT is a language spoken globally and the CHECK book should not belong even in the rain forests of Amazon.
Please Amazon.com, wake up to the new world and join the EFT nation, drop the CHECK BOOK. I think it is time Amazon came out of the rain forests and hugged the computer key board, that is where the new bank lives and not in the Check Book. The rest of the world lives on QWERTY or QWERTZ, and that includes the global banking system. The rest of the banks are in the “clouds” globally and it is time for Amazon.com to move up into the clouds.
Keep well; keep working.
dr. w. o. ochan
(author)
Even though I am in Europe and receive EFT payments from Amazon KDP, I STILL get paid by check from Amazon Associates. It’s prehistoric and a nonsense. Some parts of the Amazon empire clearly still operate in a cave.
Hello Derek,
Email or phone won’t work, but imagine if hundreds or better thousands of authors send a registered letter to CreateSpace, addressed directly to their CEO’s, that might get their attention.
And additionally several articles in Forbes, NYT, BusinessInsider, LinkedIn and all the social media sites where CreateSpace is present…
Did you check with your Swiss banks if you can open an additional account with them in the USA in order to receive electronic transfers?
Alles Gute,
Doris
How sad this is also happening to authors overseas! How about, I paint another picture of corruption and deceit from Amazon and CreateSpace, who are the same company. I am an author, who wrote a book and published it in 2008. October of 2009, receiving my first royalty check from LSI or Ingram in the amount of $1673.00. I chose to stop production of this book for personal reasons, so I contracted Ingram/Booksurge and wrote them a letter to stop production of my book regardless of it making money. I thought they stopped production. I never checked to see if the book was being sold because of other events and situations going on in my life. Well, Amazon and Create Space has been selling it for 8.5 years, against my requested wishes and without paying a royalty fee to me within the past 8.5 years. I am an American! I addressed this situation in March of 2018, by sending a certified letter to Jeff Bezos, and Amy Nelson the owner of Amazon and CEO of Create Space. Four weeks after receiving my certified letters, Miranda Perozzi sent me an email claiming she would handle the situation. I replied to her email. She said she removed my book from their Amazon website. However, she never removed it, But the best blessing of all, I have four emails revealing thier lies and unethical dynamics! So, I will be submitting everything to my attorney. I wrote another book called “Thorns to Roses” by Eydie Schultz. It is an eBook on lulu.com, iBooks and soon Nook. It has biblical and scientific proofs of God’s asexual genetics, white blood cells, nucleus etc. The book also has medical validation of God’s miraculous medicinal values derived from the “Tree of Life’s byproducts.
In 2016, I published this discovery on my website. It’s terrible what happened to me from our USA government and their allies, but a book you have freedom of speech, and they can’t take that away from you. To make a long story short, Miranda claimed they have not made any sells on my first book in the past 8.5 years, so then why would Amazon and it’s merchants continue to sell it? Additionally, I already have the proofs to their lies. Furthermore, they are selling my first book at these variations of prices. $23.94, it jumped to $285, after they received the letter on March 5 2018, it jumped to $440 and just recently after I replied to their last email about how unethical, and corrupt they are, it is now at $553.00.
Being the founder of the “Tree of Life” and having validated proofs from Scientist, Doctors, and others in the Science community. Amazon would definitely not take it down, They will make more money for anyone who wants to know detailed information about me. They are greedy and the most corrupt thieves, I have ever encountered.
However, “Thorns to Roses” also has information about me or a memoir, along with discovering the “Tree of Life” and our USA government and it’s collaborators and allies censoring it. I was once crippled for ten years, and can now walk with absolutely no pain. So the seeds of the “Tree of Life” has cured my central nervous system or spinal disorder, and others, who had similar spinal deterioration. The eBook also provides hope to those in need, my own metaphysical struggles, and metaphysical success!
Unfortunately, many authors give up and just let the thieves continue to steal from them. Or, they do not have the money to retain Corporate litigators. I will tell you, I will not allow Amazon or Create Space to continue with their non-sense and devilish minds. I will now retain a brilliant corporate litigator to defend me but also, anyone else, who they have harmed financially, emotionally, and spiritually.
So if anyone wants to join in for class action lawsuit against the most corrupt corporation in the USA please respond to this comment or find me on Facebook.
Hi Eydie. Are the book prices you refer to of between $285 and $553 listed under Mass Market Paperback? One of my books is listed for $2,796 under this category.
This section of Amazon’s price page works like a secondhand bookshop. If you click on the price, you will see that your book is offered as a used book.
My book has this notice:
Used – Good
Item will be used. May not include supplements such as one time use codes or cds.
As with all secondhand books, the author and publisher are not entitled to royalties,
It might not seem fair, but it is perfectly legal. However, it is open to scammers and hence the ridiculous prices. I would much prefer Amazon stopped this practice.
I live in the UK so thankfully things are a bit easier, but the check thing was going on even here when I first published with Amazon (I didn’t try Create Space until much later). Although it’s the same company, it’s run quite differently, evidently. It’s like the tax information, when I submitted it they insisted on a paper copy and the address is a different one. Then there was a mistake in the listing of one of my paperbooks and after sending messages and spending a whole week trying to sort it out I had to go a different way (common sense doesn’t seem to apply with create Space). I pointed out the same issue to KDP and it was sorted within hours.
At the moment, as my formatting skills aren’t great, I’m using Draft2Digital that gives you the option to submit your book for paper version with Create Space. They do pay directly when you get $10 worth of sales in any place you publish through with them, so that could be an option if the frustration gets to people. Or perhaps raising it with the big boss, Jeff Bezos…
At first, I believed this was a very old post.
I live in France, I also use Createspace. I receive direct deposit to my bank account for any amount of dollars, no minimum. Createspace pays monthly whatever the sales.
Set that in your Account Setting, enter your Tax information (and tax treaty for your country of fiscal residence) and forget about the cheques.
Cheers,
PS
I never received a cheque from Createspace. Using direct deposit from day one, sometime in late 2011.
Thanks for your comment Massimo. Yes, EFT is available in France, but still not for me here in Switzerland. Go figure! Createspace offer EFT in very few countries, and they haven’t added any in years.
Wow, that’s incredible. Is that related to whether there’s a tax treaty in place or not with the country of fiscal residence?
Createspace is losing money in not using direct deposit. Might be an issue of legal constraints/agreements with specific countries rather than a deliberate choice from CS.
It’s just Createspace, Massimo. I have been receiving EFT payments from KDP and Google for years, no problem. I have no idea why Createspace are being, well … jerks! They are an Amazon company, so if KDP can do it, there is no legal problem whatsoever.
I have been reading about this, and agree with you wholeheartedly. I am from Australia, so have read up about royalty payments from Amazon having to reach over $100 USD before they’ll pay me. As you so eloquently pointed out, this is shit. However, I will admit that for anything less than that, a cheque is not worth it. The AUD is so terrible, plus the bank fees, it would be useless to bank a cheque less than $100. But if there was EFT, then that would be great. I really don’t see what’s so hard about paying to an international bank… do you think it comes down to the conversion fees? I’ve seen authors recommend a Citibank or HSBC account, as these are international banks, so should be accepted by Amazon to put their USD payments into. The fees on these accounts though are quite substantial. Lots to think about (still in the midst of writing my first book, so I have a way to go before I worry about this too much though ).
I know Australia is one country that is not looked after very well by Amazon, but at least as I understand, EFT is available for Australian authors from KDP. But one tip I would give, is that you can change the setting in Createspace to increase the minimum payment by check. So if by chance your book does sell well in paperback, change the setting to say US$500.00 and then at least the bank fees for clearance won’t chew away at your royalties too much.
I doubt if the problem is conversion fees, as Amazon probably pay a small service fee to their bank to make EFT payments. But these fees would be a lot less that the cost of raising and posting checks, so this is were the whole logic gets lost on me. It would be cheaper for Createspace to use EFT for all.
Unfortunately not, Amazon will only pay us via EFT for royalties earned in the AUS Amazon store. Every other store we still need to wait for a cheque to be posted (and each store’s royalties have to be over $/£/€100 before they’ll pay – they don’t add up $ and £ sales to make $100). It’s very disappointing.
I agree with your point of the fee of a cheque has to be more than EFT transfers so I have no idea why they’re in the dark ages. I didn’t know people still used cheques haha.
I sympathise with you then. As an Aussie too, I suppose I’m lucky to at least have EFT here in Switzerland for KDP. The only option you may wish to consider is Payoneer. I have seen a few Aussies authors online who are using the service to overcome the problem. The other option is if you have a friend in the US, who you can trust, and use their bank account to collect your royalties. Both not ideal though. So much for a globalised economy huh?
Thanks Gillian! Yes, there are alternatives such as Lulu, but with my books already published, it would be a long process to re-publish with say, Lulu. And Createspace IS and Amazon company, so listings are easy to link with ebooks. There are workarounds for payment also, but it involves using a service such as Payoneer, who charge you to get one of their debit cards, which can then be used as a US bank account, but they don’t have a brilliant reputation as I understand. I have read of a number of people losing money from their Payoneer accounts.
I have to say though, that Amazon are a wonderful company and have supported self publishers extremely well. It is only Createspace that is so stubborn. Hopefully, one day they will finally address this issue.
Oh I wish you all the luck with this. I hope they will rectify it for you, I did RT it so maybe if more people see it Createspace will try harder to make things work for people outside the US. Are there any other options for you to use beside Createspace, like Lulu? Not saying to give up, but if they are such a horrible company, maybe there is a better alternative?