EIN, Anyone? The Road to Self or Indie Publishing Part 5
I breezed over some important information in my last blog because I got focused on formatting. Probably because this was my biggest bugaboo. And while it’s one of the cheaper parts of self-publishing to out source, if I couldn’t format my books, I’d have to pay someone every time I put out an e-book or needed one corrected. It hit me that I had jumped into formatting without fully explaining some steps in the process of setting up my publishing business. These steps are important because they help the indie publisher maintain a degree of personal privacy online. First of all, I applied for an Employer Identification Number (EIN). These are really easy to get from the IRS via the Internet and once I got it there was no reason to splatter my social security number across the globe. Why an EIN? Because all the distributors need a way to legally identify me for tax purposes. They require either a social security number or an EIN (or some equivalent if you’re fro...