Electronic KDP payments for international publishers: a letter to Amazon

Hi, guys,

I’ve been a publisher with KDP for about a year now, and I’d just like to take this opportunity to ask for something that’s really important to me, and no doubt to many small publishers around the world.

Let me thank you, first, for providing the platform, which has reinvigorated literature, and also for announcing recently the new HTML5 format that will support CSS. This is a huge deal for us, as it means we can create ePubs as our standard and then convert them to MOBI with confidence that the formatting will remain intact.

What would be the next huge thing for us is if you could add support for electronic payments to a range of international bank accounts. Even if you did this via PayPal it would be a huge leap forward. We have a bank account in Singapore, and by not offering electronic payment it has an impact on our cashflow (cashing US checks is a huge pain and the funds take a minimum of 7 weeks to clear).

By not offering international payments, you guys are well behind Apple, which pays regularly by EFT to our Singaporean account.

Let me say again, we’d love for you to start offering electronic payments on a global basis, and I would really appreciate it if you could give us some information about your plans in this area.

An assurance that it is in train would greatly improve our confidence in the future of the platform, and free us from having to look at other, suboptimal options like possibly publishing our Kindle books through Smashwords in future (since they don’t offer direct ePub, MOBI, or even HTML upload, their publishing process is awful, but they will at least pay us by PayPal).

I look forward to what you have to bring us in future, for a new, truly global publishing industry and literary culture.

Sincerely,

Ben Hourigan
author of Kiss Me, Genius Boy
Director, Hourigan SA

Author: Ben Hourigan

Ben Hourigan is a novelist from Melbourne, Australia. His books Kiss Me, Genius Boy and My Generation’s Lament are Amazon category bestsellers, and are available wherever good books are sold online. Ben also works as an editor, copywriter, and self-publishing consultant at his own firm, Hourigan & Co. For news and book release updates, sign up to his email newsletter.