I finished QA’ing my 2016 books today. I’m officially into 2017. Now I’m working on my 9-books Galaxy Mavericks series, which will probably take me through the weekend. The first book always takes the most time—the subsequent books always take about half that.
I think I can get through the 2017 books by end of the weekend, which will put me into 2018 around 11/1. If it takes me a week to do a year’s worth of books, then I’ll be done before Thanksgiving, which is the plan.
Then, I’ll be in a much better spot.
I also discovered something interesting today that people should know about.
Apparently (I use the word apparently because I haven’t been able to verify it yet)…when you die, your bank will shut down your bank account. That is obvious.
However, when your bank shuts down your account, places like Amazon, Kobo, etc. can no longer pay you, which means they can no longer pay your heirs unless your heirs know what they’re doing. Your money goes into escrow and if you’re not careful, your heirs will never be able to get it. Even if they get into your account, the retailer will require paperwork to ensure they have the rights to your account.
That’s why you need to start thinking about estate planning now.
How would you prevent that from happening? A couple of ways.
First, having a business like an LLC or corp and a bank account in the business’s name so that your account doesn’t change when you die is a good start, and then making sure that a spouse or executor has access to that account. Or, I’ve seen some talk about creating a trust and using a bank account in its name so that your death doesn’t register this type of change at your bank (or a book retailer). But I’m just spitballing. I plan to research this and figure it out. I’m not a lawyer or accountant, so you have to do your own research. I’m still learning about this stuff so I can’t guarantee I’m writing about this 100% precisely right now.
But it’s a reminder that when you die, so do your accounts. If you’ve got a book earning a lot of money, you’re going to make book retailers a lot richer and your heirs won’t be able to get the money.
Oh, and don’t forget that there are two taxes you have to worry about when you die (in the US).
Upon your death, a court will review your intellectual property and copyrights and assess taxes—if you don’t think they will do this for one little book that isn’t selling, or that your work isn’t worth much, think again.
There’s the federal estate tax and your individual state estate tax or inheritance tax. The court/state will value your intellectual property and assess you a tax depending on your financial situation and the laws that apply at the time of your death. Not only will you get slapped with a tax, but your heirs will have to pay it, and if they don’t have access to the money from your book sales…….and it’s a lot of money you owe in taxes……you just might bankrupt them. And if they file for bankruptcy, then a bankruptcy court can seize the copyrights to your books and sell them to creditors. So, you can never file bankruptcy or you’ll lose absolutely everything. Again, if you think I’m kidding or if this sounds silly…read the laws and court cases.
I hope you see why I’m trying to figure all this stuff out now.
Hopefully this post opens some eyes to just how messy running a business full of intellectual property can be. It’s easy to ignore this stuff because, well, we’re alive, probably healthy enough to not have to worry about death, and our main focus is trying to figure out how to write books, let alone sell them. This is not on many people’s radar.
Even Amazon, Apple, Kobo, etc. don’t address this. Shame on them for not doing more to promote awareness of these problems. My hypothesis is that not enough prolific indie authors have died yet for this to become too much of an issue. But just wait……………….
If you haven’t started planning for your death as an author yet…maybe you ought to start.
Anyway, have a good night.
