Self Publishing Ups and Downs part one

Its been a year since I wrote Death Race against the Patriarchy, my first official novel. Honestly I had meant to start a new by now, but I a few detours and curves along the way got me off track.

For now I’ll give an overview of the issues and steps I went through. Call it a self review if you will.

To NaNo or not to NaNo.

http://nanowrimo.org/

Death Race against the Patriarchy was written as a lark as part of the National Novel in a Month...contest? It’s not really a contest, its a more of a self-help motivational tool, with goals and emotional incentives to keep you writing. While it most definitely got me writing, doing 50,000 words in a single month, one must realize the rewards for completion are intangible and not meant to be actual rewards. But this certainly is not an attack on NaNo, as it is a great at promoting literacy and writing.   Upon completion of NaNo in 2015, I was treated with a PDF certificate of completion, not really something you can put on the wall or in your resume, but why not. There was also a bunch of discounts for various writing related services. As fall is when my income dips the most, I could only afford one of them, and decided on a publishing service.

Fastpencil, so it begins

YEP

So my pick of coupons was Fastpencil, a self publishing service that offers world wide distribution of electronic and printed works, with clear focus on the former. Their normal cost was/is a pretty steep at $275, but my coupon granted me use of it for $75, so I brought in. I had no idea of how big or effective Fastpenicl was at the time, and like an goofball following a motivational poster from twitter or the net, I gave into impulse and jumped right in.

The first rule of publishing club...

...is that things are never as easy as you think. The second rule is that a small buy in always becomes a bigger buy in later on. So as I readied to press the “finish your publication” button, I suddenly realized something was wrong. I noticed that I needed to submit an IRS form to Fastpenicl. So I did, but later realized something was quite wrong with that as well. I am Canadian, not a US citizen. There wasn’t much on Fastpenicl on how to go about the process. Trying to contact them was fruitless. But I finally figured out that I needed to fill out a different form before submitting the first form (which I had already mistakenly submitted) and than put that all on the electronic form under my profile. Easy.

The quest for the ITIN begins

So what I needed was an individual tax identification number as a non-resident alien so I could take advantage of the treaty rights between Canada and the U.S. that allowed me to avoid the withholding tax of 30%. Kind of looks like Star Trek Techno-babble, and certainly it felt like at the time. So off to the IRS website for some forms, which I had to find for myself. Oddly the form and information on it seemed straight forward, which should have been my first indication everything was fated to go belly up later on. But in an effort to save some money and confident in my skills to figure things out, I set out to do it on my own.

The most expensive photocopy...

So one of the things I needed for for my ITIN submission was a certified passport as proof of residency. I haven’t had a passport in decades, so I needed to get one. This took a bit of time, but it soon arrived and back to the immigration office to get my certified copy. Now its one thing to send all my passport submission stuff way down east (from my perspective here in western Canada) to the official offices and wait three weeks to get it done. It’s an entirely different thing to send it back down east to the same office and wait another three weeks for an official certified copy. It’s also quite insane to have this process cost nearly as much as the original passport. So when my passport and its certified copies came back in a thin plain envelope causally thrown half ways into my mailbox I certainly needed a “drink-drink” as my grandma would have called it. When I saw my $45 certified copy was a poor quality copy that looked like it was done on a first gen inkjet printer half out of ink and all that was special about it was raised watermark stamp and an obviously form letter signature, I had a couple of extra drink-drinks.

STOP! In the name of law!

So finally I had all I needed, and sent my application for an ITIN down east again, but this time south of the border. Now for those of you who think that the paperless digital age is at hand, realize that the IRS, at least on this front is old school. No digital submissions or replies, snail mail baby in a big unfolded envelopes. Round trip was an estimated 6-8 weeks state side, so I figured 10-12 for me. Unfortunately I was out of time and had to submit my project to get my coupon savings, I would have to take tax hit on any sales. I wasn’t really expecting that many sales to be honest though, it was the principle of the thing.

So considering I finished my book in around November of 2015 and started the Fastpenicl stuff in December, It was around March 2016 that I got my IRS rejection letter. Looking through what I thought where the easy to use IRS instructions, I honestly couldn’t figure out what I did wrong. So I made a fateful call.

This is the IRS, what the hell do you want!

I just assume "Richard" was actually Ben researching his role.

So I called the IRS and talked to...Richard? Honestly I can’t remember his name offhand, but let’s call him Richard for ease of use and to protect myself from his wraith.   If your Canadian and have to deal with the CRA (our IRS), you’ll know that they can be to the point, but generally are well mannered and trained in customer relations. Richard was not. I remember when he first answered the phone, “Internal Revenue Service, what do you want?” Loud, aggressive, and kind of scary. I was taken a back and tried to satiate his fury by meekly asking if he could this poor Canadian. His demeanour didn’t change, but told me what I was missing. First I needed a note from Fastpencil, which hit me as kind of weird as this means that you could not get one if you are a self starter.   I knew that getting a timely response from Fastpenicl was going to be an issue.  But Richard assured me that if I dropped Fastpencil a line and said that the IRS said it had to get done, that it would get done.   So I contacted Fastpencil through Twitter....and the letter got done nearly instantly.    The second thing Richard told me was puzzling.  They preferred colored certified copies of the Passport...which the Canadian passport peoples didn't even offer me and pretty sure I hadn't seen this requirement in the IRS ITIN FAQ.    So, what the heck could I do?   

Continued in part 2.