Please send cake

Tags

audiobook, cover, e-book, paperback, royalty, self-publishing, Society of Authors, tax

It’s time for the annual totting-up, as I prepare my self-assessment tax return and work out whether being an author makes me any money at all, or whether I am in fact paying for the privilege.  (Incidentally, my top tip for filling in tax returns – and indeed any complex form – is this: if you don’t understand the question, the answer is no.)

First, some stats for you:

• I have self-published 21 non-fiction books (all about anti-money laundering, all in paperback only), five Sam Plank novels (all in paperback and various e-formats, and the first two as audiobooks as well), one collection of articles that I wrote for the local newspaper (paperback only) and one box-set of the first three Sam Plank novels (e-format only)
• I have also self-published a guide to the Sam Plank series, with the first chapter of each novel and a glossary of Regency terms, but that’s free and so it brings in no royalties
• In June 2015 my tax return revealed that I had made just under £1,500 from the writing side of my professional life
• In 2016 that disappeared into a net loss of £44.87
• In 2017 I increased my net loss to £288.71 – obviously too much spending and not enough writing
• In 2018 I bucked the trend and went into the black, making a net profit of £1,338

So what can I report this year – up or down?  Profit or loss?  In the period 6 April 2018 to 5 April 2019 (that’s the crazy English tax year for you), I made a net profit from my authorliness of £1,294.31.  In essence, that’s royalties and sales minus cover designs, promo materials and membership of the Society of Authors.  It works out at £24.89 per week.  At this rate, I’ll be lucky to afford even a modest garret.

Don’t forget to vote for the title of “Plank 6” – for £24.89 a week, I’m certainly not choosing my own titles.

(And in case you’re wondering, the blog title is from a letter my father sent to his mum from university in the 1950s, which we still have in the family archive and which reads, in its entirety: “Dear mum, Washing enclosed.  Please send cake. Pete.”)

A right royalty rumpus

Tags

Amazon, CreateSpace, KDP, Kindle, print-on-demand, royalty, self-publishing, tax

Part of being a self-published author is dealing with the money side of things.  I am extremely lucky in that, for me, writing is a hobby and so I do not count on it for my income.  (Just as well, considering it makes me £25 per week.)  I do hope that one day I will be able to rely on it a little more, but for the moment, it’s an enjoyable side-line.  And this is why I have never bothered getting to grips with the royalty situation.  (Isn’t that a marvellous word for something rather ordinary?  Here’s the explanation from etymologyonline, one of my most-used websites: “c. 1400, ‘office or position of a sovereign’, also ‘magnificence’, from or modelled on Old French roialte [12c., Modern French royauté], from Vulgar Latin regalitatem, from Latin regalis.  Sense of ‘prerogatives or rights granted by a sovereign to an individual or corporation’ is from late 15c.  From that evolved more general senses, such as ‘payment to a landowner for use of a mine’ [1839], and ultimately ‘payment to an author, composer, etc.’ for sale or use of his or her work [1857].”)

Don’t get me wrong: I have a fair grasp of how much I make from each copy sold.  (It’s a bit approximate, because it does vary according to country of sale, exchange rates, etc., but it’s about £1.10 per paperback copy sold on Amazon, and £1.10 per Kindle book.)  But what mystifies me is that every month I get five royalty payments.  Yes, five.  Three of them come accompanied by statements, while the other two sneak in alone.  The three statements cover purchases made in pounds, US dollars and euros.  But I have no idea what the other two payments are for.  On my bank statement all five payments say simply that they have come from “Amazon Media”.  And so I tot them up and bung them on the tax return.

But now change is a-foot.  I have received an email from CreateSpace (the print-on-demand company that I use, which is – like almost every business under the sun – owned by Amazon) announcing that “CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing will become one service”.  KDP is the service I use to sell my Kindle books, and CreateSpace authors seem to have little choice in the matter (pick your battles, as my grandma used to advise), so I have pressed the button to migrate my CreateSpace titles to my KDP account.  On the surface, this seems like a good development: I can now go to one dashboard to see all my sales – POD paperbacks and Kindle books.  But I can’t help thinking that things might not be that simple…  For a start, I’m going to have to wait longer for my £25: “CreateSpace pays monthly royalties 30 days after the end of the month in which they were earned while KDP pays monthly royalties approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which they were earned.”  And those royalties might well shrink a little, as they are calculated after the cost of production is deducted, and “some low-page count books will see an increase in printing fees when they are printed in the UK and EU”.  It remains to be seen how low is low when it comes to page count…

Rolling in it

Tags

Book of the Year, cover, Design for Writers, earnings, Martha Plank, Samuel Plank, tax

One of the great mysteries of life is the self-assessment tax return.  I have had to do these for years, ever since I left the ranks of the employed in about 1989 and became self-employed, and then my own employee, and now a freelance writer as well.  I’m terrifically organised and gather the required paperwork through the year, so completing the return holds few fears for me – but it is always a complete surprise when I find out (a) what I have earned, and therefore (b) what I owe the taxman.

A couple of years ago I confessed to you that being the author of the Sam Plank novels had cost me £44.87 over the year.  Frankly, that’s a bargain hobby compared to my husband’s spending on cycling and golf, but still, I will admit to a slight disappointment on realising that full-time profitable authorship was so far beyond my grasp.  But the picture is much better this year.

Taking into account my earnings from the novels in all their formats, and the outlay I have made on such fripperies as cover design and celebratory stickers, in the period April 2017 to March 2018 I made – made! – £1,338 from being an author.  I’m in the black!  Granted, it’s only £25.73 a week, which would hardly keep me in Jaffa Cakes and trashy magazines, but it’s something.  And on the bright side, by using the National Archives’ nifty historical calculator of spending power, I see that £25 in Sam’s day would have bought me four cows.  Martha would not have been best pleased.