Holy Yikes! Self-publishing and Tax Law

I published a book last year. I made some dough on it. Not a lot, but enough to generate two 1099-MISC forms from Amazon and Smashwords.

This week, I went to the TurboTax website to do my taxes. 1099-MISC with an amount in box 2, it told me, is either property rental income or business income. Plz to be proceeding to fill out a Schedule C.

I have a business?

So I start in on the schedule C. Business name, business address, business type code. This all seems rather silly. I write fiction from a chair in my living room. Some day, God willing, I might be a self-employed writer, but not right now. I have the proverbial day-job, a full-time job in an urelated field that brings in the majority of my personal income. Now onto the deductions. Oh, yes, I paid some money to get a personal website put up to promote my writing and book. Enter the expenses on that.

Suddenly, my refund, which was not itty-bitty due to mortgage interest, doubled. What. This can't be correct.

Now, ask some people, this is all perfectly legit--especially if Turbotax lets you do it leads you down the garden path right through it. But I'm not keen on the idea of being audited. So I spent an hour plus today waiting in the queue for TurboTax's free CPA chat. Schedule C is correct, says my Free CPA. "But it's not a business," type I. Free CPA disappears for a moment, then gives me ( this useful info dump )

Yeah, legally a hobby, for now.

So I return to Turbotax, enter an expenses write-off equivalent to my sales, and wipe my hands clean.