Amazon will begin an all-electronic payment system for Kindle Direct Publishing writers as of September.
Word came in a notice I received this week.
KDP authors are being asked to update their information to include bank account information, and payments will occur automatically every 60 days.
This was welcome news for me. When I first signed up for an author account, I was unable to receive electronic funds transfers because Canadian banks don’t use a BIC number as their branch ID, and Amazon could not accept a bank account which didn’t have one. I was told I would be paid by cheque as soon as I accrued $100. Each country (Amazon.ca, Amazon.com and so on) had to accrue $100 individually before they would send out a cheque, so even though I had sales, I had yet to receive an actual payment.
So, we’ll see what happens in 60 days! The update process was straightforward enough—just sign into your Amazon account, and under ‘royalty payments’ click ‘add a bank account.’ All the information I needed was available in the code at the bottom of an empty cheque, but you may have to Google to find out where specifically your particular bank places it all. I needed my account number, branch number and bank code.
I look forward to seeing what my first royalty payment will be. I have slacked a little on promoting and producing new stuff because I was starting to despair that it would ever go anywhere. Now that I can get paid more frequently, I feel the urge to hustle a little more!