Hi! Since Held for Ransom hasn't been on this thread in a while, and you ask some good questions, maybe I can answer some of these instead.
- I assume you pay taxes, how do you do this (i.e have you registered a company that you publish all your books through?)
- Do you need different pen names for different genres and if yes; do you market each of that pen name individually or do you add all your readers to the same mailing list?
- You said that you have experienced readers who bought your whole collection of books, does this mean that all your books are under the same authors page but with different pen names?
- Taxes: I don't know how HFR does it, but I pay taxes as a self-employed individual, not a corporation. Aside from the regular April tax filing thing, I pay estimated taxes quarterly. I'm no tax expert, but I'm guessing that the quarterly payments wouldn't be necessary if you made, for example, a few hundred dollars. But once you find yourself making a regular income from self-pubbing, I believe you'd be penalized if you didn't make estimated quarterly payments. (Obviously, I'm no tax expert, so don't take this as professional advice.)
- Genres & Pen Names: Most writers recommend keeping your genres and pen names separate, unless your audiences might cross over. For example, if you write mysteries and suspense, you might share readers under a single pen name. If, however, you write erotica and kids books, you'd definitely need two pen names. There are, however, authors who disagree that you need different pen names for different genres. For example, the guys who produce "The Self-Publishing Podcast" (a great resource available on ITunes, btw) write in several genres under the same pen names.
- About HFR's Pen Name(s), I could be wrong, but I always had the impression he wrote under one single pen name. So probably, if someone bought his whole collection, they'd simply be buying every book written by that pen name.
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