We need to write a primer for new publishers. Can people add any roadblocks they have struck into this thread?
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So the three spaces I've tried so far are Patreon, DrivethruRPG and Itch. My initial reflections are these.
The terror of mathematics.
A Paypal account is convenient. There are a couple of other options on the various sites, like cheque on Drivethru, Stripe on Patreon / Itch, and Payoneer for non-US people who want to use a Stripe-like service, but all three accept Payapl as a payout address.
The amount of money each takes varies. Check these at time of use, but at time of writing they are:
Drivethru: 35% of cover price for non-exclusive distribution, 25% for exclusive. I can't see withholding taxes here, but double check if you are line ball on this whole thing. They have a flat fee for payouts to Paypal of $1. Their default system is an automatic payout when your are over USD50, checked once per month but you can change it.
Patreon is complicated: it is 8% plus appropriate taxes. The payment platform fee is structured by currency and the table is huge, but here:
Essentially it's 5% + a small flat fee to encourage you to bundle your transactions instead of taking micropayments. Be aware there is also a 2.5% fee on payouts in a currency other than your payout. So, I hit this whenever I pay Americans even though my PayPal money is collected from Americans (mostly). This matters for, in my case, using Paypal to pay artists an cartographers.
On top of this is the actual payout fee. It's also on the link above. It's also by currency. Mine is $1.50 per payout, You can automate payout to once per month, or just leave it there and payout all at once. You can't pay out fractionally. So, when I wanted to pay someone outside the Paypal ecosystem for some art, I couldn't just withdraw that amount.
You may be thinking "Timothy, that's 2 payout fees. What gives?" Basically one is for the payment platform and is taken out with the 8% and taxes when you money goes in. The other is for the actual payment when the money comes out. You do this in stores all the time, but real-world retailers suck up the platform fee and put it in the price (at least here in Australia).
Selling individual posts on Patreon has all of the above going on, but the minimum price is USD3 and you can only sell on the "web experience not the app." which is a weird thing written a weird way.
Itch
Itch lets you choose how much your hosting costs, from 0-100% of the cover price.
If you make all of the payment arrangements yourself, with each buyer, you can lower the costs below, but its a lot of work.
Uniquely of the three, itch makes you undergo an automated IRS interview so Americans may wish to have their tax details ready. I, myself, did not have mine ready so the withholding tax rate is 30%. Non-Americans like myself can reduce the withholding tax by filling out a form to be given an American tax number.
It also has a payment platform fee of around 30 cents + 2.9%. It can be set to periodical payments. Itch suggests monthly because, as they note, Paypal will also bite you per payment. They won't tell you how much because Paypal's fee structure could fill a small book.
Itch will charge you 10% on all accounts left inactive for a year. They are not a bank and do not want to hold onto your money.
This is not financial advice.
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Graphic assets
When setting up on DriveThru you may want a logo, which must be square and 250px or less. They do however encourage transparencies, so you can make a rectangular-seeming one. It needs to be in jpg, gif or png. Remember that DriveThru has light and dark modes when designing your logo.
Cover mages, to quote:
" Cover images should be 736 to 953 pixels wide (larger images, closer to 953 pixels wide, are better), in PNG or JPG format, and in 8.5 x 11 or A4 portrait aspect ratio. However, the covers can be any dimension, bearing in mind that it will be shrunk accordingly to fit specs. We recommend JPG files under 400kb for the best image load speed on site."
Patreon
Your banner (cover image) will be displayed at 1600x400px. Your little photo is recommended to be 1024x1024px. File must be 16 MB or less per image.
Itch:
Someone else has already done this far better than I could.
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When I set up my DriveThru publisher account years ago I just ticked a box saying "nope, not an American", and problem solved. Its easy to simply generate a sales report at the end of the tax year to get total earnings and report them to my local tax authorities.
DriveThru also lets you pay for games from your publisher account (there's a transfer button built in to the shopping cart payment interface), which is useful if you have a games habit. Which is a bit of an incentive to keep a balance floating around in their system.
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Drivethru RPG pages for POD books.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/pub_upload_pod_files.php
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/pub_podbook_templates.php
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I tried to sort out POD on Drivethru, but it assumes you have Affinity or InDesign and I have neither. Being but a lowly hobbyist I used Canva.
Fortunately Lulu lets you get away with that sort of thing. There is one snag, which is that to publish POD on Lulu you are required to buy a proof copy of your book at cost. This implies a delay, and, in the case of Australians like myself, a shipping cost which is more expensive than the book itself.
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I looked at Drivethru and for PoD they have the same rule. you have to buy one copy, to make sure it's up to your standard, and be able to fix any issues that might arise.
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I've managed to do POD with OpenOffice for the (B&W) interior, and Scribus for covers. But you certainly can't do anything complex and fiddly that way.
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