As the name of this blog suggests, I like to think of myself as a writer. I do all sorts of other things too, but first and foremost, I like to think of myself as a writer.
Of course, I wouldn't dare to put myself in the same league as David Eddings, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Steven King, Dean Koontz or of course, J.K. Rowling, but I write.
I have published many stories on websites that offer free stories to readers, which I believe is where many people begin, but then I heard about the Kindle thing.
My wife was all, "I like the feel of a real book. You won't catch me reading from one of those things." Which is fair enough, but the information I was getting, suggested that others didn't necessarily feel the same way.
I took the bull by the horns and published one of my stories on Kindle and lo and behold, people actually bought copies. Sadly they didn't buy it in the thousands, but enough bought it to let me know that maybe I'd be able to get some financial remuneration for my efforts.
The sting came when I discovered that because Amazon is an American company, they withhold 30% of my royalties to give to the IRS. Yeah, you can't escape taxes, but I thought that because I was an English person, with an English email account and an English address, it would have been obvious that I was anything other than an American.
Apparently not.
So having just passed the sales number that would have given me my first payment for my book, I discovered to my chagrin that I wasn't going to get paid because my sales returns didn't add up to the amount needed once the 30% withholding was taken into account.
I was devastated. I didn't and haven't sold that many books to begin with and for them to withhold all that hard-earned money just didn't seem right.
So I looked into how one goes about getting that withholding removed.
At first glance, it didn't look so difficult, but on closer inspection, it transpired that there were several hoops to jump through that I hadn't seen. On top of that, we had just at that time decided that moving to France on a permanent basis was our way forward. If I'd have filled in all the forms, jumped through all the hoops and done everything else the American government though I should to, I'd have had to do it all over again once we'd moved here.
Still, having got here, I took the bull by its horns again, phoned the tax office and got my EIN number. I then followed that up with the W8-BEN form, which I paid to have recorded delivery and waited.
Then I waited some more ...
... and some more ...
After eight weeks, I had to face the fact that Amazon probably hadn't got my form and promptly sent off another one. This time I considered sending it recorded delivery again, but didn't and just two weeks later, I got the fabled email from Amazon.
This one told me I had forgotten to tell them I was in France - if the rest of the address didn't make that perfectly plain.
I sent another form and went through this one with a fine-tooth comb to make sure I hadn't missed anything.
I waited and waited and then the other day, I got an email.
This one told me that if I didn't fill in my tax information, I wouldn't be able to sell my books on Amazon.
I nearly hit the roof. It wasn't as if I hadn't tried to tell the buggers what, who or where I was. I was just not getting through to them.
Further down the email however, I discovered a link. This link took me to a page which allowed me to complete my W8-BEN form on-line, took hardly any time at all to complete and there we are, job done.
It's only taken four months.
Why on earth they have taken so long to provide an on-line service for filling in this form I don't know, but now you budding authors out there who have been put off by the deadly IRS's claim to your hard-earned, take heart it's now much, much simpler.
So why haven't I been talking about the work that's supposed to be being done on our house; I mean that's two days now where nothing's happened?
Well, the answer's really simple.
The cladding can't be fixed to the side of the house because it's raining. Secondly, the wood burner isn't in yet because the run from the kitchen through to the upstairs chimney isn't a straight line.
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| The straight tubes and the elbow. Note the elbow is a matt finish and the straight tubes are nice and glossy |
It's not a big job to do, however, finding those elbows that are a) the right size or b) the right colour to match the tubes already purchased, is!
The poor lads have been trawling here, there and everywhere to try and find these parts and apparently - or so we have been told - it's because it's holiday season. We have been told that because of the holiday season, there aren't as many deliveries.
Who are we to argue?
Looks like another day's work has bitten the dust ...
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