Archive for January, 2009
Ongoing Paperwork
Monday, January 12th, 2009
This will only really be of use to anyone reading from outside the US but wanting to sell games on the App Store. I’m finally (after about 8 hours) in a position to submit all my forms to finalize the contract to sell my App via iTunes. NOTE: I’m not actually even trying to put my app on the App Store yet, I’m just trying to get all the paperwork ready for when the game is done. I want to have everything ready so that the submission process is as painless as I can make it.
These are roughly the steps I went through today:
- Logged into iTunes Connect
- Entered “Manage Your Contracts” (you’ll see that you have a contract for free apps already set up, but that you need to create one for paid apps. Create one)
- Printed and read through the entire app contract
- Agreed to the contract
- Printed and filled out the GST tax form (GST506 E) that they link to at the bottom of the “Manage Your Contracts” page (Note: this needs to be MAILED to Apple in California) – I would assume there are other forms if you’re in a different country.
- Filled out my Contact Info (straightforward)
- Filled out my Banking Info (see Follow-Up blog post for info on Canadian Transit Numbers)
- Started filling out my Tax Info
- Discovered that I needed a US Employer Identification Number
- Searched around the IRS website and found the most up-to-date SS-4 form (that allows you to request an EIN)
- Filled out the SS-4 form and realised I might have to mail it to the IRS
- Searched around again and found a phone number (Note: this is a TOLL number – you pay long distance for calling it) here: IRS Applying for an EIN (You want the international phone number listed there)
- Called the number, waited on hold for 10 minutes (long distance) and was disconnected
- Redialed and was put straight through to a person
- They took all my information and issued me an EIN over the phone. Hooray!
- Filled out the rest of the Tax Info page back in iTunes Connect (and read through dozens of pages of international tax treaty laws to try to find the info I needed)
- Finally, submitted the information
- Received an email from iTunes Connect with a government form filled out with the information I had just entered
- Was informed that this form also need to be MAILED to Apple.
At this point my contract seems to be in limbo until I submit both of these forms to Apple via the mail system. I’m glad I didn’t go to the post office before I completed the Tax Info part of the process, as they don’t tell you that you’ll need to mail it in until you’re finished filling out the form.
If you’re about to go through the process, I’d set aside about a day to get all the forms filled out and ready to mail…and good luck!
Owen
Follow-Up
Monday, January 12th, 2009
Just in case anyone from Canada is reading this and working on an iPhone app, when you enter your banking information, after agreeing to the paid app contract, it asks you for your bank transit number. In Canada we usually write the transit number like this: XXXXX-YYY. However, in the US, bank transit numbers have 9 digits (no hyphen) and the form only accepts this American format. For it to work, you need to enter your transit number as: 0YYYXXXXX (that’s a leading zero).
Note: This is what it was for me and I make no guarantees that this is identical for you. You might want to verify by sending an email to the help address they give you on the page.
Onward!
Owen
Preparation…
Monday, January 12th, 2009
Over at Games From Within, Noel posted a detailed account of his experiment with submitting a simple, paid application to the App Store:
- The “One Day” iPhone App Experiment (www.gamesfromwithin.com) – I consider this post a ‘must-read’ for anyone doing iPhone development who hasn’t yet shipped a product.
One of the issues Noel ran into was with getting the contract set up for actually selling an app, not just giving it away for free. He mentions that non-US companies have to go through some extra hoops to get signed up. This immediately set off some alarms in my head and I figured I’d better deal with this right away.
I headed over to iTunes Connect this morning and started the process of getting a contract set up so that I’ll be able to sell my app. Sure enough, there’s a link on there that says if you’re selling from Canada, you need to fill out a form, print it off, and actually mail it to Apple before they’ll either: put the app on the App Store, or pay you any money from Canadian sales. It’s a form that allows Apple to collect and remit GST on your behalf.
The problem is, the last time I had to print off and mail something to Apple (when I was registering my business with them as a developer), it took nearly 6 weeks to get a response. I’m going to fill this out ASAP and express post it to California. If it takes more than 2 weeks for them to deal with this, it’ll delay my launch of the game. Not good.
Now I’ve run into further problems trying to submit my banking information so that the contract can be moved to a “processing” state. For some reason the forms aren’t letting me submit a Canadian bank transit number. However, I sent an email to the banking support address this morning and they’ve responded already, so that bodes well.
I’m really glad I subscribe to Noel’s RSS feed, or I would have been in trouble in 3 weeks time. I might still be anyway, but at least I’ve got a fighting chance of still launching on time.
Owen
New Dapple Trailer
Friday, January 9th, 2009
I finally finished working on a trailer for the game and posted it to YouTube for easy sharing. I’m planning to send out press releases about the game next week and I really wanted to have a video showing a bit of the gameplay ready to show.
I set up a Channel on YouTube for Streaming Colour:
- StreamingColour’s Channel (www.youtube.com)
I also embeded the video in the Dapple Page, so you can check it out there too. And now, I’m even going to attempt to embed the video in this post. I’ve never done this before, so if it doesn’t show up in your RSS reader (if you’re reading the RSS feed), then come on over to the site to check it out.
Have a good weekend everyone!
Owen