Novel Creation Process: Become a Publisher
By Cody Leet
To Self-Publish or not. If you do, here is how you do it.
▢ Pick a publisher name
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There are many articles on publishing under a business or just your name. Both are viable. However, having a business allows you to separate personal from author transactions cleanly and affords other benefits:
If you opt to go this way, you need to think of a name that has not been used before in your State. You will want to run a google search with this to find where to do this: "business name search state of <yourstate>" |
▢ Open a bank account
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There are many options here from local to online. I have no opinion either way. All you need is your EIN and you can get an account the same day.
It's a good idea to have this to separate your business transactions from your personal transactions. This will help a lot at tax time. |
▢ Get an EIN (Tax number)
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The EIN number is the social security number for your business. You need this to perform many tasks, such as opening a bank account or publishing in Amazon.
You can request one directly from the IRS here: https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/apply-for-an-employer-identification-number-ein-online Or, if you used a service like MyNewCompany to set up your business, they can do this for you as part of their package. That's what I did. |
▢ Establish an LLC
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I set up my publishing company in 30 minutes by using a firm to do the paperwork. Here is the company I used:
http://www.mynewcompany.com/ It cost $200 plus state fees. However. they provide a service that reminds you when other paperwork needs to be submitted, such as annual minutes. This is an invaluable service to us authors that want to write, and not |
▢ File Taxes
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This part is never fun, and I'm no accountant, so I cannot give any kind of real advice here. But here is a link that was given to me by the Creative Girls Adventure Book Club that you might find useful.
A Tax Cheat Sheet for Kindle eBook Self-Publishing |
