Puerto Rico business: complexity, embarrassment and solutions

For many years, I have been doing business with Puerto Rico. I’m fortunate to have several friends and clients from the the Island of Enchantment. In addition to appreciating Puerto Rico’s unique linguistic expressions, music and gastronomic delights, I have learned how different US companies handle Puerto Rico’s unique relationship with the United States mainland in different ways. Officially, Puerto Rico is a «commonwealth», aka a «free, independent state» to which some of my Puerto Rican friends jokingly add: «which is neither free nor independent», although they tell me that in their native language of Castilian. On one hand, all public mailboxes to mail a letter in Puerto Rico indeed belong to the USPS (United States Postal Service) and the postage to send a letter between Puerto Rico and any of the US states is the same as between any other US state. Even though most personal packages sent to Puerto Rico via USPS are exempt from import taxes in practice, that situation is often the opposite if they are sent via Federal Express or UPS, since they usually have taxes added. Those are only some of the contradictions that exist. A recent situation with a Puerto Rican client-author who published all three book versions with TecnoTur Publishing: the print book, the ebook and the audiobook inspired me me to write this article. We’ll come back to that situation in a moment. Before that, I want to give you two different ways most US companies deal with sales to Puerto Rico (both of which are fine), followed by a third and fourth one, which are the silliest and craziest of all.

1. When ordering from some US companies, you must pick Puerto Rico in the country field. After doing that, some require picking PR in the state field, and others don’t. It really doesn’t matter. In the case of BarnesandNoble.com, as soon as you pick Puerto Rico in the Country field, it fills in PR in the State field automatically. In the case of Amazon.com, nearly every product can be shipped to Puerto Rico or shipped within Puerto Rico since August 12, 2024, when Amazon broke ground with its own dedicated station in Dorado, Puerto Rico.
2. With some other US companies, you must pick United States in the country field and then PR in the state field. That also works fine.
3. I know the case of one US company where one division allows shipping to Puerto Rico and another absolutely refuses. (See details in the upcoming section.)
4. At least one service company has made an unreasonable request of Puerto Rican residents when they arrive to the mainland to claim their pre-paid rent-a-car, causing a major public embarrassment for the company followed by an apologetic statement from headquarters. See video below.

Above, attorney and popular YouTuber Steve Lehto (who is apparently the proud user of an ElectroVoice RE20 microphone) describes in the above video how Hertz unreasonably requested a passport from a resident of Puerto Rico, despite the Jones-Shafroth Act of 1917 which granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans. With the notable exception of the late Fufi Santori (whose amazing story goes beyond the scope of this article), the only passport Puerto Rican residents can have is the US passport (if they don’t possess any other foreign citizenship). However, they usually never have to bring their US passport on them when they travel from the island to the US mainland. Usually, they only need their Puerto Rican driver’s license or Puerto Rican government-issued photo ID card, for those who don’t drive. The Hertz agent refused to accept the Puerto Rican driver’s license. The Hertz headquarters had to apologize publicly after news spread about this unacceptable blunder, as covered in detail in the above video.

Wide book distribution and direct sales from the book’s dedicated website

The above promotional video was written, produced and edited by Ernesto Morales-Ramos for his book, The Disciple, available at TheDisciple.pub.

As covered in my past articles and in discussions with all of our author-clients:

• Authors who only distribute their books via Amazon are leaving a lot of exposure, opportunities (and money) on the table. That’s why at TecnoTur Publishing and Editorial TecnoTur, we always advise author clients never to accept a free ISBN from Amazon or any other platform and instead to get an open-one, which can allow selling via our dual-printer/dual-distribution strategy, to facilitate sales both via Amazon and via all independent bookstores in the world, in addition to libraries and direct sales on the book’s dedicated website. That last one is where the author makes the highest royalty, within a maximum of three business days (instead of 60-90 days later) and even gets the purchaser’s email address, in order to thank her/him personally and later offer upcoming books directly. (That doesn’t happen with books sold by bookstores.)
• In the case of ebooks and audiobooks, the sale made directly from the website we create, it’s an instant download where the author earns approximately 97%, much higher than with items sold via any other bookstore.
• In the case of print books, we take advantage of IngramSpark’s direct link for ecommerce, which we put on the book’s direct website (although lower on the page than the offer of the audiobook and ebook) at a much lower price than elsewhere. That way, the author earns much higher royalties than via a traditional bookstore, although certainly less than with the audiobook or ebook, since there is printing and shipping involved with any printed book. IngramSpark creates a different direct link for the US and for the UK, where the author gets paid the royalty without having to handle the billing or shipping. The only problem we have is that the IngramSpark US link doesn’t currently work for Puerto Rican shipping addresses. This is not because of any anti-Puerto Rico policy at IngramSpark. It’s simply because of a design flaw in that department’s IT which created the direct sales e-commerce. So for this link for direct purchasse from the printer, i.e with the paperback link on my book’s website at TheCastilianConspiracy.com or Ernesto Morales-Ramos’s at TheDisciple.pub, we have found it necessary to add a sad disclaimer next to the link:

United States only, excluding Puerto Rico so far. Please stand by while the printer fixes that issue.

What is makes this Ingram Spark situation even more ironic is that this Puerto-Rican limitation only affects the direct purchases made by end-users through these links. Ingram Spark does not prevent the author (using her/his author account) from purchasing books to be shipped to Puerto Rico. An Ingram Spark representative has apologized in writing to Ernesto Morales-Ramos and is trying to escalate the issue until its resolution. If and when I beccme aware of it being resolved, I’ll either update this article or publish another to announce it.

Even though our growing number authors and I would be better served financially if every purchaser preferred the audiobook or ebook, we know that a certain percentage of book consumers prefer the physical print book, which is why we produce all three versions. Other than this technical limitation regarding direct sales to Puerto Rican delivery addresses, we are very happy with IngramSpark’s offerings.

Image credit

The main image, a Orthographic projection of Puerto Rico, is courtesy of Milenioscuro. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Lee este artículo en buen castellano

Negocios con Puerto Rico: la complejidad, la vergüenza y las soluciones

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None of the listed individuals or companies mentioned above has paid for this article. Allan Tépper earns royalties on the sales of his own books. Some of the manufacturers listed above have contracted Tépper and/or TecnoTur LLC to carry out consulting and/or translations/localizations/transcreations. So far, none of the manufacturers listed above is/are sponsors of the TecnoTur, BeyondPodcasting, CapicúaFM or TuSaludSecreta programs, although they are welcome to do so, and some are, may be (or may have been) sponsors of ProVideo Coalition magazine. Some links to third parties listed in this article and/or on this web page may indirectly benefit TecnoTur LLC via affiliate programs. Allan Tépper’s opinions are his own. Allan Tépper is not liable for misuse or misunderstanding of information he shares.