: Re: Why is distributing an audiobook so much more complicated than POD or eBooks? I have signed up for Amazon's Kindle service for making an eBook, and for Amazon's Createspace for making a print

@Murray165

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With Kindle Direct Publishing and Createspace, you can create an account to upload your books without providing any tax information, as you have already noted. However, before you can publish anything through either of these channels, you will have to provide that information, and you will no doubt have to go through a similarly difficult process there as well.

When you started the process with Amazon's ACX service, what you found was that Amazon changed the order in which they collect information. Even with their e-book and POD services, you will ultimately encounter the same issues because they can't distribute your books without having the payment information first. They just happen to collect that information beforehand with their ACX service.

Unfortunately, for anyone who resides outside of the United States, there are different tax considerations than those that a resident of the US would have to deal with. The reason for this is that US tax laws apply differently to non-residents, and in addition to that, I am sure that Amazon is required to provide some level of income reporting for other countries as well. They are simply protecting themselves by ensuring that they collect whatever information is required based on where you reside.

As far as the difficulties in making your audiobook available, that comes down to distribution rights. Each country has certain trade regulations that companies must adhere to, and for certain types of goods, those regulations may be more restrictive for foreign companies. Right now, it appears that Amazon has distribution privileges in the US and the UK, but not anywhere else.

Keep in mind that as recently as a year ago, Amazon was not even selling e-books in countries like Spain or Japan or Brazil, but now they are. I am sure they are working to negotiate whatever agreements they need to have in place in order to enable them to sell audiobooks in additional countries. So even though they don't sell them in other countries right now, don't be surprised to find that they are selling them in other countries in the near future.

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