Amazon and payments

More changes from Amazon for self-published authors. I have always opted to receive a cheque when more than $100 or £100 has accumulated but recently Amazon informed me that they were no longer sending out cheques and would I please fill in my details to receive payments directly into my bank. I'm not happy with the decision, but there doesn't seem to be any get out clause. Authors in America who receive US dollar payments won't worry, but every cheque I cashed at my bank had a conversion charge on it. Admittedly it was not a huge sum, but now I wonder if every paltry amount sent to me is going to incur a conversion charge.

Here's what Amazon say:
"As part of our ongoing efforts to improve the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) program, we're changing the default payment method in your country to Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) in September of this year. Checks will no longer be offered as a payment method.

EFT payments are paperless, secure, and fast. This environmentally friendly method deposits royalties directly into your bank account, with no minimum payment threshold. This means you will be paid electronically in full 60 days after the end of every month for sales within that month. Instead of waiting up to three weeks for your check to arrive, EFT payments should appear in your bank account within five days after the end of the month."

This could turn out horrendously for me - last month Amazon told me I had earned 54 rupees in India. That intrigued me, fascinated me that someone in India was actually reading my books. But wait - I had no idea what an Indian rupee was worth, though I have always known it's a very small amount. I checked this morning. A rupee is worth 0.01016 of a pound sterling. I think I earned 50 of them, so that means £0.50. The bank will charge more than that to convert the rupees into sterling. 

Unless  EFT payments don't require conversion, I think I am going to be annoyed.  

Tudor money

Had a bit of a tussle yesterday with money. Not mine, but theoretical money in the sixteenth century. I read letters from Sir Ralph Sadler in which he reported details of his time at the Scottish court to his master Henry VIII. He reported that the French had sent 30,000 crowns to the Queen Dowager of Scotland and while the question of who got the money and where it eventually went is fascinating, my problem was - how much was 30,000 crowns?

Mannlichen  slopes

If they were English crowns, then they were worth five shillings each. If they were Scottish crowns, then they were worth twenty-three shillings each. Quite a substantial difference - £7,500 or £34,500. Until 1707, the two countries had different monetary systems and they changed with each king. I can see now why lots of novelists ignore the question of money except in the roundest of round terms!

I decided that the French King would hardly bother to send three ships and an ambassador for a paltry £7,500 - and then remembered that when a groat (6d) was worth the equivalent of £10 today, even £7,500 was a considerable sum. I tried working out today's equivalent values for both sums, and gave up. I didn't believe what my calculator was telling me, and anyway, I've never been good at maths.

Perhaps I'll stick to round figures.