If you are a Kindle publisher in Nigeria, you’d know that it is not guaranteed that you would ever see your royalty payments. Reaping the fruits of your Kindle book-publishing is entirely down to luck.
This is because as of press time, Amazon has restricted payments to Nigerians to check. When your check is issued it is very likely to get stolen on transit. Your Kindle paycheck may never get to you.
This is why many Nigerian publishers were happy when Amazon announced on Kindle that they would be phasing out All check payments by the end of 2017. See the announcement below (look in the middle paragraph of Payment Methods)
So, Nigerian publishers were happy that they would be able to get payments through the safe electronic transfer means, even if banks would collect their own cut (cost of transaction).
Imagine the disappointment when Nigerian publishers checked their Kindle account to update their payment method, only to find that check payments wasn’t phased out after all, and remains the only payment method for people in Nigeria.
When contacted, Amazon conformed via email that they haven’t phased out check payments as they had promised to. Their reply read in part:
“We had earlier informed that the checks will be eliminated for all the publishers by the end of 2017, however we still haven’t taken any decision on it…”
As a result of this, many Nigerian publishers fear that Kindle checks to Nigerians will continue to be stolen, and many would thus lose the fruits of their patience and labour. (Payments by check have a $100 threshold.)
We appeal to Amazon to quickly introduce Electronic Funds Transfer to Nigerians. That would ensure that many discouraged Nigerian Kindle publishers would safely get the money they have worked for and be inspired to be more positively creative.
