Today’s post is a follow-up to Monday’s post by Ellen King Rice. It is tax season, and many people will begin trying pull together the numbers needed for their federal tax returns. If you sell books at book signing events or trade shows, you are in business for yourself, and Ellen’s post details what your responsibilities are.
Authors make readers when they do in-person book signings. We have the chance to connect with potential readers on a personal level, and they might buy a paper book. If we are personable and friendly, they might tell their friends how much they liked meeting us. Those friends will buy eBooks. (We hope!)
Most shows and events will require you to have a business license if you intend to sell books in person. This means you will have a small amount of paperwork after each in-person signing, so I am revisiting a post from 2022 detailing how authors can manage an inventory of books and have the right numbers for tax purposes.
For eBook sales, you have no obligation to report sales taxes, only your royalties as listed on the 1099 issued by Amazon or Draft2Digital, or other eBook sellers.
Whether you are traditionally published or indie, if you intend to make personal appearances at local bookstores, fairs, or conventions, you will have an inventory of books on hand to manage and account for at the end of the year. But more importantly, even if you are traditionally published, you pay for the books you sell at shows.
The good businessperson has a spreadsheet of some sort to account for this side of the business, as it will be part of your annual business tax report. An excellent method for assembling the information you will generate for your tax report is discussed the previous post, The Business Sequence for Writers. Ellen King Rice has given us a great framework for keeping our business records straight.
There is only one more skill to have, and this is only for those who intend to sell books in person. A wise author understands that good records ensure a successful business and sets up the bookkeeping system before they go to book fairs. They have a list of the stock on hand, what books are on reorder, the day they were ordered, and how long it takes for them to ship. Also, you should keep an account of your cost for each book, both for tax purposes and insurance purposes, just in case the stock of books is lost or damaged in a house fire or flood.
You can do this on notebook paper with a pencil, a ruler, and a calculator. I began working as a bookkeeper in 1982, using the industry-standard tools of the trade for the time. We noted each transaction with a red or black pencil in a green or yellow ledger book of varying sizes (2 to 32 columns). Then, we used rulers or yardsticks to ensure that we tracked a particular item on the correct line across all the columns. The handiest electronic device on my desk was the calculator with a printout tape.
The tools for this method of accounting are still available in the stationery section of any store and are quite affordable. I have used Excel since 1993 for all my accounting purposes, but no matter how you create your spreadsheet, each title you have on hand to take to book fairs or shows has several costs associated with it.
What follows are several screenshots of a simple way to organize a spreadsheet:
The first column contains the heading Titles: under that heading, list each book you take to shows by the title. We will use Huw the Bard as our example book.
On the same line as the title, working to the right in column 2, write unit cost. This is the price you pay for each copy you must take to a show and varies from title to title by the length of the book and the trim size. On the same line as the book’s title, write the cost you pay KDP or Ingram Sparks or your publisher for that book: $4.99. (edited, thank you Judy!)
Column 3 is the current stock-on-hand at the end of the taxing quarter: Quantity in stock: 19
Column 4 is the sum of column three times column two: Inventory value: $89.11. That is what you would have to pay to replace those books. It is also what some Departments of Revenue may tax you on at the end of the year if the value of that stock is over a certain limit, say $5,000.00. My stock on hand never even approaches that limit.
This is why retail stores have end-of-the-year sales. They need to offload their inventory to keep their taxes low.
Column 5 is the retail price. This is what the book sells for at bookstores: $12.99. You set your retail price to cover the cost of replacing the book, with some revenue to cover table and vendor fees at shows and conventions, and still allow for a small profit.
Column 6 is the special show price (if you discount your books at shows): $12.00.
Column 7 is the retail value of your stock on hand. It is the sum of column 3 times column 6: $228.00.
Were you required to collect sales tax from your customers? When you apply for your business license, you will receive a pamphlet with all the taxing jurisdictions in your licensing area and their tax rates. These range between .08 and .11 here in Thurston County. Washington State has no income tax, so all our state’s revenues come from businesses and sales taxes collected at the time of purchase.
Make a note of the city or county where the books were sold, as you may be required to forward the taxes collected to the Department of Revenue or your local Business and Occupation tax collecting agency. If you are smart, you will make a second page with these columns:
At the bottom of the page for both spreadsheets, total each column. That will give you the stock expenses for all your titles. There will be no scrambling at the end of the quarter for Business and Occupation taxes if you live in a state like Washington State or at the end of the year if you live elsewhere. Be smart and set the money collected as sales tax aside because it is not yours and shouldn’t be considered part of your income.
That way, you will have it at the end of the year if you only do a few shows a year like me, or quarterly if you are out there doing shows and signings every week.
The bookkeeping side of your business should take less than an hour after each show. If you have kept your spreadsheets updated, filling out annual business tax forms for your state and federal agencies will go quickly. You will have all the numbers you need to back up your reports if you are audited.
Also (and this is important), you will know the exact number of books you have on hand in each title. You will know when it’s time to reorder more stock. There is a two-to-three-week lag in printing and shipping time, so ordering books in advance is critical. You don’t want to waste money purchasing stock you have plenty of, but you need to have a supply of your better sellers.
My personal spreadsheet is a little more detailed and is saved in the cloud as are all my business and other records. It looks like this:
Something we rarely consider is the random natural disaster, but we must be prepared. If something should happen to your stock of books due to theft, fire, or flood, you will be able to claim your business loss. Many authors are more prolific than I am. For most of us, replacing the stock of 1 to 30 titles is an expense that is difficult to carve out of the family budget unless we have sold enough to cover that cost.
Theft is rare, as people are usually quite decent at conventions and trade shows. I’ve only had one book stolen from a table at a show in all these years—a $15.00 (show cost) loss (or $6.80 my cost).
While it disturbed me on one level, I was a bit honored that someone wanted my book that badly. The experience left me confused as to how I was supposed to feel. But on the good side, it was nice to know that shoplifters are readers too!
She also wrote the brilliant, hilarious standalone novel, 
About Ellen King Rice:
We are looking for markets that will pay you for your work. They are difficult to get into, but once you are in, you will be offered more opportunities.
Fantasy & Science Fiction
Third, they want work that looks professional, as if the author read their submission guidelines for formatting the manuscript and followed them. Publishers have specific, standardized formatting they want you to use, and these guidelines are posted on their websites.
Don’t be discouraged by rejection. Rejection happens far more frequently than acceptance, even to famous authors. Don’t let fear of rejection keep you from writing pieces you’re emotionally invested in.
Remember, 18 publishers thought a story about a seagull was ridiculous before Richard Bach’s novella, 
A new year has begun, and open calls for spring and summer contests and anthologies will start appearing in various forums that I frequent. Finding places to submit your work can be challenging, but here are links to two groups on Facebook where publishers post open calls for short stories.
My problem is this: all my stories want to grow longer than 1,000 words. It requires weeks of effort to get my work to fit within that parameter. So, I often write practice stories, limiting myself to telling the whole story in 1000 words or less. These practice shorts serve several purposes:
As a poet, I find it far easier to tell a story in 100 words than in 1,000. That 100-word story is called a 
That way, you won’t be left wondering how to attend a conference and still cover your household bills.
The publishing world is a rough playground. Editors for traditional publishing companies and small presses have a landslide of work to pick from and are chronically short-staffed. They can’t accept unprofessional work regardless of how good the story is.
Before you hire an editor, check their qualifications and references. 
If you’re a member of a writers’ group, you have a resource of people who will beta read for you at no cost. As a critique group member, you will read for them too.
Clearly and consistently label each chapter. Ensure the chapter numbers are in the proper sequence, and don’t skip a number. I would label my individual chapter files this way:
If you are writing in the US, you might consider investing in 
I have talked about this novella many times, as I think it is one of the most enduring stories in Western literature. The opening act of this tale is a masterclass in how to structure a story.
“Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.”
As I mentioned before, this book is only a novella. It was comprised of 66 handwritten pages. Some people think they aren’t “a real author” if they don’t write a 900-page doorstop, but Dickens says differently.
For me, revisions begin with the second draft and sometimes involve radical changes to the storyline or character arcs. I may take a manuscript through many drafts before finally getting the story right.
NEVER DELETE months of work. Don’t trash what could be the seeds of another novel. Save it in an outtakes file and use it later. I give the subfile a name like HA_outtakes_20Dec2022. That file name tells me the cut chapters were last changed on December 20, 2022.
Then, I give the second draft a new file name: Heavens_Altar_version_2, which becomes the version I work on out of the main file folder.
Either way, the characters will be profoundly changed from who they thought they were on page one, becoming who they are when the final sentence is written. The character arc is formed by their experiences.
True inspiration is not an everlasting firehose of ideas. Sometimes there are dry spells. If you take another look at the work you have cut and saved in an outtakes file, you might see it with fresh eyes. You might see the seeds of a different story, and the fire for writing will be reignited.
I understand that slight incompatibility has been resolved. In my opinion, both programs are good, and both have pros and cons.
Most word processing programs have some form of spellcheck and some minor editing assists. Spellcheck is notorious for both helping and hindering you.
You might disagree with the program’s suggestions. You, the author, have control and can disregard suggested changes if they make no sense. I regularly reject weird suggestions.
I am wary of relying on Grammarly or ProWriting Aid for anything other than alerting you to possible problems. If you blindly obey every suggestion made by editing programs, you will turn your manuscript into a mess.
Also, it never hurts to have a book of synonyms on hand. We all tend to inadvertently repeat ourselves, and the Read Aloud function will shed light on those crutch words. A dictionary of synonyms and antonyms can help us find good alternatives.
Our universe is a mysterious, stunning place. One puzzle that has occupied scientists for decades is the observable fact that our universe has more matter and energy than it should.
Since mainstream science still pooh-poohs its existence, telepathy and empathic abilities are whatever we who write books decide they are. I choose to see telepathy as an extension of the dark energy that scientists admit is all around us. Some people can tap into it, but others can’t.
If a real person had the kind of power that our fictional empaths wield, we would hope they were noble, compassionate, and above all, respectful of other people’s wish for privacy. We would want them to be principled, a person who would never rummage in people’s minds uninvited.
How will you describe it when they are healing on a cellular level? Some authors describe the act of healing as evil-looking lights changing to a healthier color. Others describe healing as angry-looking threads that must be untangled. Still other authors describe it as a feeling of evil that must be smoothed away.
As a younger reader, I gravitated to fantasy books that feature telepathy, healing, and magic. Two series with well-designed magic and empathic systems are:
Superpowers are both science and something that may seem like magic, but they are not. Think Spiderman. His abilities are conferred on him by a scientific experiment that goes wrong.
Life in the Realm of Fantasy 