Why I Spent $11,524 to Replace Perfectly Good Fuel Tanks on my R44 Helicopter

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The short answer: Lawyers.

I’m not sure when the brouhaha began.

It might have been right after this crash, when a helicopter operating at or near gross weight at an off-airport landing zone in high density altitude situation by a sea level pilot crashed, killing all four on board and starting a forest fire that raged for two days.

Or it could have been earlier, after this crash, which I blogged about here, when a helicopter operating 131 pounds over the maximum gross weight for an out of ground effect hover by a brand new helicopter pilot low-level at an off road race crashed, severely injuring all three people on board.

I’m sure it was before this crash, when a 250-hour pilot landed to “relieve himself” at an off-airport landing zone with a density altitude of at least 11,000 feet, then panicked when he got a low rotor horn and aux fuel pump light at takeoff and botched up a run-on landing on unsuitable terrain, severely injuring himself and his wife.

These three cases have two things in common (other than pilots who did not exercise the best judgement): the helicopters were R44s and the crashes caused fires that injured or killed people.

Crash an Aircraft, Have a Fire

Of course, if you crash any kind of aircraft that has fuel on board hard enough into terrain, a fire is likely to result. Fuel is flammable. (Duh.) When a fuel tank ruptures, fuel spills. (Duh.) If there’s an ignition source, such as a spark or a hot engine component, that fuel is going to ignite. (Duh.)

I could spend the rest of the day citing NTSB reports where an airplane or helicopter crash resulted in a fire. But frankly, that would be a complete waste of my time because it happens pretty often.

Don’t believe me? Go to http://www.ntsb.gov/aviationquery/index.aspx, scroll down to the Event Details area, and enter fire in the field labeled Enter your word string below. Then click Submit Query and check out the list. When I ran this search, I got more than 14,000 results, the most recent being a Cirrus SR22 that crashed on April 27, 2012 — less than 2 weeks ago.

The Knee Jerks

But Robinson reacted in typical knee-jerk fashion. After issuing a ridiculous Safety Notice SN-40, “Postcrash Fires,” that recommended that each helicopter occupant wear a “fire-retardant Nomex flight suit, gloves, and hood or helmet,” they began redesigning components of the helicopter’s fuel system. First they redesigned the fuel hose clamps and issued Service Bulletin SB-67, titled “R44 II Fuel Hose Supports.” Then they redesigned the rigid fuel lines to replace them with flexible lines and issued Service Bulletin SB-68, titled “Rigid Fuel Line Replacement.” And then they redesigned the fuel tanks to include a rubber bladder and released Service Bulletin SB-78 (superseded by SB-78A), the dreaded “Bladder Fuel Tank Retrofit.”

Why “dreaded”? Primarily because of the cost of compliance, which was estimated between $10,000 and $14,000.

Originally released on December 20, 2010 (Merry Christmas from the folks at Robinson Helicopter!), Robinson did give us some breathing room. The time of compliance was set to “As soon as practical, but no later than 31 December 2014.” I did the math and realized that my helicopter would likely be timed out — in other words, back at the factory for overhaul — before then. But the February 21, 2012 revision moved the compliance date up to December 31, 2013. At the rate I was flying — about 200-250 hours per year — it looked as if I’d still be flying it when December 2013 rolled along.

Is it Required?

I talked to my FAA POI. He’s the guy that oversees my Part 135 operations. He’s a good guy: reasonable and easy to talk to. He doesn’t bother me and I try hard not to bother him. After all, he’s got bigger operators with bigger headaches to worry about.

We talked about the Service Bulletin. Neither of us were clear on whether the FAA would require compliance for my operation. After all, it was a Service Bulletin, not an Airworthiness Directive (AD), which is definitely required.

We left off the conversation with acknowledgement that I didn’t have to do anything at all for quite some time. We’d revisit it a little later.

Pond Scum

Around this time, I was contacted by a lawyer representing the family of the 250-hour pilot who crashed in the mountains because he had to “relieve himself.” This guy had seen my blog posts about my problems with my helicopter’s auxiliary fuel pump — perhaps this one or this one or possibly this one. Or maybe all three.

He was looking for an “expert witness” to provide information about the problems with the fuel pump. It was clear that he was trying to pin the blame for his clients’ injuries on the fuel pump manufacturer and Robinson Helicopter. Not on his client, of course, who had caused the accident by making a series of very stupid decisions. Apparently, Robinson is supposed to make idiot-proof helicopters.

I got angry about the whole thing — lawyers shifting the blame to people who don’t deserve it — and responded as you might expect. I also blogged about it here.

I didn’t make the connection between lawyers and bladder fuel tanks. I believed — and still believe — that it’s not unreasonable for post-crash fires to occur in the event of an aircraft accident. It’s part of the risk of being a pilot. Part of the risk of flying.

The Buzz and Insurance Concerns

Meanwhile, the Robinson owner community was buzzing with opinions about the damn bladder fuel tanks. Some folks suggested that they’d been developed as a means for Robinson to make money off owners in a time when helicopter sales were slow.

Maybe I’m naive, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think Robinson was just trying to protect itself from liability. By offering this option, it would be up to the helicopter owner to decide what to do. If the owner didn’t get the upgrade and had a post-crash fire, Robinson could step back and say, “The new fuel tanks might have prevented that. Why didn’t you get them? Don’t blame us.” And they’d be right.

And that got me thinking about my insurance. So I called my insurance agent, who was also a friend and helicopter pilot. The year before, he’d managed to come up with an excellent and affordable policy for R44 owners and I’d switched to that policy as soon as my existing policy ended. Would I be covered if I didn’t get the tanks installed right away? He told me that of course I’d be covered. The compliance date wasn’t until December 31, 2013.

Buy Now, Save Money?

I also talked to my mechanic. He told me that the tanks were on back order and it could take up to eight months to get them. I was also under the impression that the cost of the tanks was going to rise at the end of 2011. And that if I ordered the tanks, I wouldn’t have to pay for them until they arrived. I figured that once they arrived, I’d store them until I was ready to have them installed. Or maybe even hold onto them until overhaul.

So I ordered them in late December, right before the Robinson factory closed for the holiday break.

I’d been misinformed. I had to pay for them up front: $6,800. Merry Christmas.

And, oh yeah: the price didn’t go up, either.

A Horrifying Scenario

Time went by. I thought about the damn tanks on and off throughout the winter months. In February, during my occasional checking of accident reports, I saw this report about an R44 with a post-crash fire. It got me thinking about liability again.

And then I started thinking about lawyers, like that sleezebag who had contacted me. And my imagination put together this scenario:

My helicopter crashes and there’s a fire. One of my passengers is burned. Although my insurance covers it, the blood sucking legal council my passenger has hired decides to suck me dry. He claims that I knew the fuel tanks were available and that they could prevent a fire and that I neglected to install them. He puts the blame squarely on me. My insurance, which is limited to $2 million liability, runs out and the bastard proceeds to take away everything I own, ruining me financially forever.

Not a pretty picture.

Is this what Robinson intended? I’d like to think not. But I’m sure that as I type this, some lawyer in Louisiana is working on a case using the logic cited above. The pilot might be dead, but his next of kin won’t have much left when the lawyers are done with him.

I started thinking that I may as well install the damn tanks — just in case.

Dealing with Logistics

In late March the fuel tanks were delivered. It cost another $310 for shipping. The two boxes weren’t very heavy, but they were huge. I had them delivered directly to my mechanic.

And then I started thinking about logistics. I had originally expected the tanks to arrive during the summer while I was gone for my summer work in Washington state. I figured I’d have them installed at my next annual or 100-hour inspection near year-end. But here they were, waiting for installation any time I was ready.

But when would I be ready? My mechanic said it would take about 10 days (minimum) to install them. Because the tanks had to be fitted to the helicopter, it was a multistep process:

  1. Remove the old tanks.
  2. Put on the new tanks and fit them to the helicopter. (Metal work required.)
  3. Remove the new tanks.
  4. Paint the new tanks.
  5. Reinstall the new tanks.

Most of that time was taken up with getting the tanks painted and waiting for them to dry.

Logistics is a major part of my life. I’m constantly working out solutions for moving my helicopter and other equipment to handle the work I have. I’m also constantly trying to schedule any maintenance at a time when I’m least likely to need to fly. This spring was especially challenging: I had to get my truck, RV, and helicopter up to Washington before the end of May. I also had to go to Colorado to record a Lynda.com course before the end of May.

So on April 13, I flew the helicopter down to my mechanic in Chandler and asked my friend Don to pick me up (in his helicopter) and take me home to Wickenburg. Then, the same day, I started the 3-day drive in my truck with my RV to Washington. I arrived on April 15. A week later, on April 22, I took Alaska Air flights to Colorado, where I stayed for another 6 days. Then, on April 28, I flew directly back to Phoenix. Don picked me up at the Sky Harbor helipad and dropped me off at Chandler. All the work on the helicopter was done and it looked great. I flew the helicopter back to Wickenburg that morning. Two days later, on May 30, I picked up passengers in Scottsdale and began the 2-day flight to Washington. We arrived on May 1.

ItemCost
Fuel Tanks$6,800
Shipping$310
Tank Installation$3,960
Tank Painting$454
Total Cost$11,524

The installation and painting had cost another $3,960 and $454 respectively, bringing my total for installing the damn bladder fuel tanks to $11,524.

I Blame the Lawyers

So, yes, I spent $11,524 for tanks that might only benefit me in the event of a crash. No guarantees, of course.

I didn’t need the tanks. They didn’t make flight any safer or better. They only might make crashing safer.

And the only reason I did this is so that a lawyer couldn’t point his finger at me and blame me for ignoring a Service Bulletin that wasn’t wasn’t required by law until (maybe) December 31, 2013.

The only reason I did this was to possibly prevent a lawyer from taking away everything I own, everything I’ve worked hard for all my life, in the unlikely event that my helicopter crashed and a fire started.

Do you want to know why aviation is so expensive? Why it costs so much to fly with me? Ask the lawyers.

A Visit from the Bee Man

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Removing a swarm of bees is easy — if you know what you’re doing and aren’t afraid to get stung.

BeesThe text message from my friend Pete arrived just as I was trying to think of another way to procrastinate:

Bees swarming on the shop. Bee man is going to come get them.

A cell phone image accompanied the text. It showed a roof eaves absolutely littered with bees.

A while later, I was at my friend’s farm, watching the bee man set up. He was an older man who’d likely been doing his job for quite some time. He was dressed in a loose-fitting, white coverall that was tight at his wrists and ankles. An attached hood with mesh mask hung at his back. He’d arrived in a flatbed truck towing a forklift on a trailer.

BeesWhen I arrived, he was placing a wooden door atop a fruit crate on a forklift, forming an elevated table. He placed a white box atop that and raised the apparatus about four feet off the ground, right beneath the bee swarm. The bees looked even more impressive live. Pete, three of his sons, and two of his older son’s friends stood a good fifty feet away, watching.

The bee man explained that the bees were swarmed around a queen and that they’d likely decided to settle there. It was pretty obvious that they needed to be removed.

While folks in cities might call an exterminator, here in farm country, bees have real value. The “bee man” was a beekeeper who not only made honey but rented his bees out to farmers for pollination. In fact, Pete had a few dozen of his hives out by his apple trees. The bee man would take the bees home and set them up with their own bee hive boxes. Pete might see them again next year in more controlled conditions.

The Bee ManWhen Pete made it clear that he wasn’t interested in sitting on the forklift to lift the bee man and his box up to the swarm, the bee man fetched his forklift off the trailer and parked it beside Pete’s. He then raised the two sets of forks and climbed up beside the box.

And then, as we watched, he used his bare hand to scrape the bees off the eaves and into the box.

“These bees are very calm,” he said.

Bee Man in Action

Bees CloseupHe wasn’t kidding. He continued to sweep them down toward the box with his hand and, later, a stick. Although everyone else kept their distance, I got closer and closer with my camera. Soon I was standing on a third forklift parked inside the shop, not eight feet from the swarm and box, snapping photos.

Bee Man with iPhoneI wasn’t the only one taking photos. The bee man climbed down, went to his truck, and came back with his iPhone. He then climbed back up the forklift and used the phone to take a closeup photo of the bees. I’m wondering if his shot ended up on Facebook.

Lighting the Smoker

Smoking the Bees

It took quite a while — at least 30 minutes. The bee man was very patient. One by one, most of his other spectators wandered off. He was sure he’d gotten the queen in the box, but the rest of the bees were taking their time joining her.

After a while, he got out his smoker, torched the burlap piece inside, and used smoke to coax the bees into the box. He explained that the smoke makes the bees think there’s a fire so they go into the hive to eat honey in case its lost. They then get sleepy from eating so much. Didn’t sound quite right to me, but what do I know?

Bees on a TruckWhen he had most of the bees in the box, he covered it up, carried it back to his truck, and strapped it down on the flat bed. He pulled his forklift back onto its trailer and got ready to leave — but not before he gave Pete a plastic gallon jug of honey in exchange for two of Pete’s bottles of wine.

I’d enjoyed the show and was glad I’d gotten that text message.

Bottling Wine, Day 2: Bottling

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A look inside a mobile wine bottling facility.

I’m one of those people who likes to see and do as many things as I possibly can. Life, to me, is a quest to learn and experience as much as possible. Each day I get to do or see or learn something interesting is another day worth living.

Yesterday was one of those days. I got an opportunity to photograph, video, and help out in a mobile wine bottling facility.

The Truck

Big wineries — like the ones everyone has heard of — have their own wine bottling facilities. These are likely big rooms filled with very expensive, highly specialized equipment. Big wineries can afford to buy and maintain these machines. After all, they’re producing thousands of cases of wine every year and may run the bottling line dozens of times a year.

Smaller wineries can’t afford such luxuries. Not only is the cost of the equipment usually beyond their means, but they also lack the space to house it and the funds to maintain it. Besides, they’re producing much smaller quantities of wine and only need to bottle once or twice a year. It just doesn’t make sense to make such a huge investment when there is another alternative.

That other alternative is a mobile bottling truck. This is a big rig truck with a trailer on the back. The trailer is completely outfitted with all the equipment needed to fill, cork, cap, and label bottles of wine.

The truck is driven and operated by a single technician who travels from one small winery to another. He knows exactly how to operate the equipment — which is both mechanical and computerized — and how to fix it if something goes wrong. He sets it up for the bottles, wine, corks, foil caps, and labels the winemaker provides. He then gets the line running while a handful of laborers the winemaker provides do the few manual tasks required to complete the process.

To say it was amazing is an understatement. Watching this thing in action was awesome.

The Bottling Process

Pumping Wine
Wine is pumped from a vat into the trailer.

Arranging Bottles
This machine sterilizes the bottles and places them on the line in single file.

Filling Bottles
The bottles are filled with wine as they move.

Corking machine
Bottles move into the corking equipment where they are corked.

Adding Foil Caps
Two workers add foil caps to each bottle.

Sealing Foil
This machine presses the foil caps onto the bottle tops.

Applying Labels
The bottles move past the labeler, which applies front and back labels with one pass.

Production Line
This look from the front of the trailer’s inside shows the bottles on the right heading back toward the door.

Boxing Wine
Two people load the bottles into cases. They’re loaded neck down to keep the cork wet during storage.

Case of Wine
Cases of wine slide down a track from the back of the trailer.

It all starts outside the trailer, where wine is pumped from its storage vat into the trailer itself though sterile hoses. From there, it goes into the filling equipment where it waits for the bottles.

Meanwhile, at the back end of the trailer, a forklift brings palettes of empty bottles to the open door. The bottom of each case of 12 bottles is unsealed. A man standing just inside the door takes a case, being careful to hold the bottom of the box closed, places it on a wide conveyor belt, and lifts the box, depositing the bottles, neck end up. He’ll do this four to six times a minute as long as the line is running.

The bottles then move, jiggling and clinking, into a rotating mechanism that sterilizes the bottles and places them on another belt where they enter the equipment in single file.

From there, the bottles are placed on tiny elevators that lift each bottle to a filling machine that moves the bottles along the line. The machine senses when the bottles are filled and stops adding wine.

The bottles then go into a corking machine that puts a cork into each bottle. Then the bottles move past two workers who place foil caps on top of each bottle. At the line’s speed, it would be nearly impossible for just one person to handle this task.

From there, the bottles move into a machine that pressed the foil caps down onto the top of the bottle, providing a secondary seal over the cork. Both the corks and the foil seals are customized with the winery’s logo.

Next, the bottles move past the labeler. The labels come on rolls that alternate front and back labels. The machine uses a vacuum to pull the labels off their backing, exposing the sticky side. As the bottles move past the vacuum pad, the sticky side of the label is pressed onto each bottle. The spacing of the labels is finely tuned for each bottle size.

At this point, the bottles of wine are complete. But they’re at the front of the trailer and need to be in the back. So they make the long trip all the way down the side of the trailer, in single file, to where two people wait. Stationed right beside the man who puts the empty bottles on the line, they have the empty boxes he discards in piles at their feet. The first person places a box on a workspace and fills it with six bottles as they file past. She then moves the box to her companion who places another six bottles in, closes the box, and pushes it through a machine that tapes it shut. Both workers are performing their tasks nonstop to keep up with the flow of incoming bottles.

After being taped shut, the box rolls down a ramp where other workers apply a label to the box and stamp the date on it. The boxes are then stacked on palettes. When all cases of a variety are bottled and stacked, the palette is wrapped with shrink wrap. It’s then transported into a temperature controlled storage area by forklift and an empty palette is prepared for the next variety.

The Results

At full speed, the equipment can process about 60 bottles per minute. The bottling tech told me we were running a little slower, maybe about 55 bottles per minute. That’s still pretty damn fast.

We bottled seven varieties of red wine yesterday, including one rosé. We used three different bottles, each of which required the machinery to be recalibrated for proper movement, corking, and label positioning. We started at about 8 AM and were finished by 2 PM. We took about an hour for a lunch break.

We bottled a total of 818 cases of wine.

Afterward, the six volunteers (including me) got to sample some of the wine that wound up in partially filled cases. Despite its bottle shock, it was pretty darn good. I think the Petit Verdot was the best of the bunch and really look forward to its release. And yes, I grabbed a bottle of that and a bottle of Zinfandel as my reward for a day’s work in the truck. I’ll wait until Pete officially releases them before I open them.

The Photos

I took a lot of photos during this process — the ones you see here are only a sampling that illustrate the main part of the process. The photos include shots taken on Sunday during the filtering, which I cover in a separate blog post.

Bottling Wine, Day 1: Filtering

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Before wine can be bottled, it must be filtered. Here’s how it works at one winery.

I’ve been neglecting my blog for a week or so mostly because of preparations for my annual migration to Washington State. First it was the packing. Then it was the driving. Then it was the unpacking. I’m here now, parked in my usual spot at the Colockum Ridge Golf Course’s tiny RV park in Quincy, WA. I arrived a full month earlier than usual just so I could witness and help out at Beaumont Cellars Winery’s red wine bottling on April 17.

The Back Story

Beaumont Orchards is one of my cherry drying clients. I’ve been responsible for drying their cherry crop after a rain since 2009. But Pete, the owner of cherry, apple, and pear orchards in Quincy, began dabbling in winemaking a few years back. He (and others) were very pleased to discover that he was pretty good at it. Last year, in fact, his wines began winning awards.

Each year, Pete has expanded his winery operations just a little bit more, producing more hand-crafted wines and setting up a really nice tasting room. Beaumont Cellars, which is based at his home, has become one of the premier wine-tasting destinations in the newly established Ancient Lakes AVA.

This year, he mentioned that he’d be bottling wines on April 17. I decided that it was something I really wanted to see, something I’d like to do some video about. So I arranged my schedule to arrive earlier than usual in Washington.

Filtering Day

Pumping Out Barrel
The wine is pumped out of the barrel.

Wine Filter
The wine filter consists of multiple vertically mounted filter pads that are discarded after use.

Connecting Hose
Pete and Megan connect a hose to the bottom of a wine vat. Filtered wine enters at the bottom to minimize splashing.

Good to the last drop
Megan catches the last bit of wine as Pete tilts the barrel opening into a pitcher.

Pouring wine into next barrel
Megan pours the last bit of wine from one barrel into the next one being filtered.

Pouring wine into the Vat
Pete pours some filtered wine into the vat.

I arrived in Quincy at around 2:30 on Sunday afternoon. I had just finished hooking up the mobile mansion’s water, electric, and sewer connections when Pete called, asking where I was. He was in the middle of filtering the wines in preparation for bottling on Tuesday.

Tired from my three-day, 1200-mile drive pulling a 34-foot fifth wheel through the valleys, plains, and mountains of Arizona, Nevada, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, I nevertheless grabbed my camera and hurried over. Pete and Megan, his winemaking apprentice (for lack of a better term) were more than halfway finished. I got to watch and photograph the activity.

The wine began in barrels. Pete and Megan used hoses and a pump to pump the wine out of each barrel, through a filter, and into a large plastic vat. The barrels for each variety were combined into a single vat.

When the pump is no longer able to suck wine from the bottom of a barrel, the barrel is tipped into a pitcher to catch the last little bit. It’s then poured into the next barrel of the same variety as it’s pumped through the filter. Likewise, any filter overflow is captured in a pitcher and manually poured into the vat. This minimizes the loss of wine.

When the job was done, there was a huge vat of wine for each of the varieties to be bottled on Tuesday. Pete and Megan cleaned up by pumping purified water through the pump and hoses, disassembling the filter, and cleaning everything down with a power washer capable of heating water to 180°F. Pete used a forklift to move the wine vats into a temperature-controlled storage area and stack the empty barrels out of the way.

Throughout the process, we’d been sampling the wine — and it was good!

The Photos

I took a lot of photos during this process — the ones you see here are only a sampling that illustrate the main part of the process. I put most of them on the Beaumont Cellars Facebook pagea gallery on the Beaumont Cellars website. In both cases, the photos include shots taken on Tuesday during the bottling, which I cover in a separate blog post.

Apple iBookstore: Understanding Payment Requirements

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It’s a royalty agreement, folks.

The other day, I received an unusual email on my Flying M Productions email account. Flying M Productions is my little publishing company, the one I use to publish Maria’s Guides and other books. Its website isn’t much to look at; just a lot of promotional material for the items it publishes and sells. There’s no support for any book there; all support for Maria’s Guides can be found on the Maria’s Guides website.

The Question

Here’s the message, in its entirety; I’ve only omitted the sender name:

I am looking for understanding of this financial requirement for ibooks author:
(Apple does not pay partners until they meet payment requirements and earning thresholds in each territory. You should consider this before applying to work directly with Apple as you may receive payments faster by working with an Apple-approved aggregator.)
Apple was not able to explain this and said I had to contact you.
Please explain.

This is obviously a lie — or a big misunderstanding — I seriously doubt whether Apple even knows of the existence of Flying M Productions — especially since I’ve been waiting over a month for it to approve two titles for the iBookstore. The idea that Apple would refer someone to me about one of their policies is truly laughable. The idea that a tiny publisher with just four titles in 20 years would provide support for the most valuable company in the world is a real joke.

And that explains why I didn’t reply.

What’s This About?

But I wanted to know what she was talking about so I did a little search. I wanted to see whether the text she’d included in parentheses was actually present in any Apple agreement. I picked “payment requirements” and “Apple-approved aggregator” as my search phrases.

First I searched the most recent version of the 37-page Ebook Agency/Commissionaire Distribution Agreement that I’m required to sign to create books for sale on the iBookstore. No joy.

Then I searched the license agreement for the current version of iBooks Author. No joy.

Then I went online, and followed a bunch of links on the Apple and iTunesConnect websites. I eventually wound up on the requirements page for the Paid Books Account. And there, in the third bullet under the heading “Financial Requirements,” was the full text she’d put in parentheses in her email message.

Apple’s Stand on This

Before I go on, you need to understand two things:

  • Apple does not want everyone capable of typing a sentence and turning it into an epub or iBooks Author document to publish on the iBookstore. Think I’m kidding? Why else would they require ISBNs for every title sold on the iBookstore? That’s just another hurdle for authors/publishers to jump. Why does Apple take this stand? Because Apple (1) doesn’t want to publish crap and (2) doesn’t want to hold the hands of hundreds or thousands of author/publisher wannabes to walk them through the publication process.
  • “Apple-approved aggregators” exist primarily as a support mechanism for Apple. If an author/publisher is too clueless to publish on the iBookstore, Apple wants a way to graciously hand them off to someone else. Thus, they approve aggregators who apparently don’t mind holding hands with clueless authors/publishers in exchange for a fee.

The Requirements page linked to above is another hurdle for authors/publisher to jump. It lists requirements to further weed out the folks they don’t want to deal with. Hell, you have to have a relatively new Mac to publish on the iBookstore — if that doesn’t weed out a bunch of people, nothing will.

What are the Payment Requirements?

But what the person who contacted Flying M Productions was concerned with was the “payment requirements.” Of all the requirements, this is the least onerous. All this means is that Apple won’t pay royalties until you’ve reached certain minimum sales amounts. Why? Well, Apple doesn’t want to deal with thousands of tiny payments every month. Instead, it holds your royalties on account until you’ve earned enough for them to make it worthwhile to pay.

This, by the way, is common. Google has always done this with Adsense. Amazon.com does it for the Kindle Direct Publishing program.

While this may seem to suggest that you need to reach a threshold for each individual territory to get payment for that territory, that’s not what I’m seeing. In fact, I was just paid today for February’s sales. My royalty earnings on sales in each of six territories ranged from a low of $38.73 to a high of $659.40, and I was paid for the total amount earned.

Paragraph 5(c) of the Ebook Agency/Commissionaire Distribution Agreement states (in part):

After deducting Apple’s commission from eBook Proceeds, Apple shall either remit to Publisher, or issue a credit in Publisher’s favor, subject to Apple’s standard business practices, including minimum monthly remittance amount thresholds determined by Apple (e.g., $150), the remaining balance by electronic funds transfer (“EFT”) no later than forty-five (45) days following the close of the previous monthly sales period.

This tells me that you need to earn a certain amount of royalties before Apple will pay you and they’re required to pay within 45 days of the close of the period. That’s why I didn’t get my February earnings until April 5 — which is still a hell of a lot better than I get from my traditional print publisher contracts.

The $150 is an example. In looking at my past statements, for periods when I only had one title listed in the iBookstore, I was paid $28 one month and $31 another. Clearly Apple is not waiting for me to earn $150 before it pays me.

How Apple-Approved Aggregators Fit In

In re-reading this Requirements page, I’m thinking that Apple is using this scary sounding “requirement” as a way to encourage authors/publishers to use aggregators. But will aggregators pay more quickly? I can’t see how. Unless Apple uses different thresholds for different publishers? Or aggregators are willing to make payments for very small amounts? Or aggregators are willing to pay before the 45-day period has gone by?

Either way, it’s nothing to get all hot and bothered about.

But I do agree with Apple: if you can’t meet their requirements, use an aggregator.