09/05/2020
My Experience with Amazon as a seller:
I have been asked by quite a few people, especially not living in Hong Kong, why the book is not available on Amazon.
Well this is my experience which has not been good and it is just far too challenging to use this selling platform from Hong Kong for a self published book.
For paperback books in order to sell them globally they need to be registered with each selling entity I.e. Amazon UK, USA, EU etc for which a monthly fee needs to be paid. The books then need to be shipped by the author I.e. Myself, to each of their global distribution centres at my cost. The cost of shipping books in bulk is horrendously expensive.
So before we even start looking at payment for sales from Amazon plus tax issues, I gave up! As far too expensive and nothing from sales would go to charity as there would be nothing left.
I thought selling an eBook on Kindle might be easier. But no! Amazon do not recognize Hong Kong as a country so will only send cheques from sales no direct bank transfers. This means payments which are usually released after 3 months (that's Amazon's process), then take another month to reach Hong Kong so 4 months waiting for payment. The cheques will only be issued in US$, Can$, Euros or GBP. It then costs a minimum of HK$100 or £10 to bank a foreign cheque. If the cheque is over HK$100 then a 0.37% commission is taken.
For selling each item on Amazon there is a 30% withholding tax taken for the IRS plus a sales commission taken from Amazon. So it is just not worth selling on this platform if you are a self publisher.
So this is the reason we are selling from our own website.
Unlike Amazon we do not have the ability to sell in other currencies so we are selling in Hong Kong Dollars. The Hong Kong Dollar is index linked to the US Dollar so the exchange rate doesn't really vary, but for other currencies this will fluctuate slightly depending on what the exchange rate is on the day of purchase.
I have received some quite aggressive emails in the past criticising our website for only selling in Hong Kong Dollars and they have made me feel like a criminal running some kind of scam! I do not in any way profit from the sales of the paperback book and all the profits are donated to charity.
So far we have raised HK$30,000 (£3,000) in profits for Ovarian Cancer Research charities.
The book is written to try and help other people going through cancer and their families, I am still going through active cancer treatment myself although now currently have 'No Visible Evidence of Disease' so I find this kind of correspondence very upsetting.
Thanks for the understanding on this issue.....