The big boys in the eBooks industry such as Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords who allow writers and authors to self-publish with their platforms, have pretty streamlined processes, right from the point when a writer uploads his or her eBook for publication all the way to be sent payment. Some of these companies are better than others, of course. This is the case with any business.
Writers Need to Be Paid
However, one thing that is always guaranteed with these well-known companies is that you as the writer will get paid, in full, for sales of titles of your eBooks. And let’s face it, as authors and writers we want to be paid when we make sales of our titles through our partner retailers. Personally, I run a publishing business and I expect to be paid by the likes of Amazon et al., as I consider them to be my partners. And by in large that’s how I get treated.
How Self-Published Writers Expect to Be Paid
Self publishing companies in India need to take stock of how their Western counterparts respect their writer partners. Pothi.com certainly follows the same model. As soon as you reach Pothi’s minimal threshold, will you be sent royalty payments through Direct Bank Transfer if you’re in India or via PayPal if you’re outside of India – all without asking. Why is this important? Well, self-published writers expect to be paid efficiently, seamlessly and quickly as possible. It’s one of the benefits of being a self-published writer.
There are self-publishing companies in India who are keen to form partnerships with writers. However, unfortunately, their payment terms are long-winded. They use the traditional invoice model, where at the end of 60 calendar days, it’s the writer’s responsibility to generate an invoice and send it to the company to make timely payment. However, ‘timely’ fails to happen, more often that it should. I’ve experienced it personally on a number of occasions where I’ve had to chase the company to send me payments. This is very poor partnership ethos in my opinion, and goes against the terms of contracts, which have been laid out by these same very companies.
New Indian Self-Publishing Companies
If you’re a new self-publishing company in India, with limited resources then it’s understandable that you might not have the complete infrastructure in place, running in true whistles and bells fashion. However, please do place as much emphasis on the payment part of your process, and try to make it as seamless and automatic for writers as you can. It will be imperative to do this, especially if you want to attract writers from across the world to self-publish and sell their work through your platforms. These writers expect to be paid in a timely and hassle-free way. Having to create and send invoices to you (unless you pay up on time as stated in your contract) just won’t do.
Image credit: marc falardeau on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]