Bummed about the new VAT rules

[Daniel]

On Jan 1, 2015 new rules go into effect regarding how all business (not just big ones) handle sales and VAT to EU countries. The new rule is that businesses must collect/report/remit the VAT according to what country the customer is in. Ebooks are included in this change, so if you sell ebooks to EU countries from your own online store, you now have to collect the appropriate VAT (which varies) for all 30-ish EU countries and then remit the collected tax (quarterly, I think).

For now, we've decided to just drop all digital products from our store.

There does seem to be a loophole in the rules that I'm still looking into. According to this page, an ebook wouldn't qualify for the new rules if you don't deliver the file automatically. For example, if you email the book to the customer after you receive notification of the sale, it isn't considered a "digital service."

I'm curious what others think about this.

[Suzy]

I have just manually added 20% to my eu prices. I don't personally have to pay VAT if I sell through e-book stores. I'm not going to try to sell my books myself.

[Daniel]

Dec 30, 2014 15:31:17 GMT -5 Suzy said:

I have just manually added 20% to my eu prices. I don't personally have to pay VAT if I sell through e-book stores. I'm not going to try to sell my books myself.

I tend to think the same way as you. I see myself as a wholesaler, and I'm happy to let the retail stores deal directly with the customers.

My wife and I do sell a few digital downloads (templates mostly) from our online store, but we don't sell our fiction ebooks. I don't want to get into explaining how to side-load, for one thing.

Some indie authors feel that we should have our own stores as a buffer against Amazon doing something evil and/or all the other retailers going under. I don't believe it would be much of a buffer. I can't imagine readers searching the web for places to buy books from individual authors. That approach might work for someone who has a brand name (like J.K. Rowling), but for us ordinary mortals, we probably won't sell anything if we aren't where people are already buying.

[Suzy]

Some indie authors feel that we should have our own stores as a buffer against Amazon doing something evil and/or all the other retailers going under. I don't believe it would be much of a buffer. I can't imagine readers searching the web for places to buy books from individual authors. That approach might work for someone who has a brand name (like J.K. Rowling), but for us ordinary mortals, we probably won't sell anything if we aren't where people are already buying

Absolutely. I can't imagine the hassle of selling books directly online would be worth it or that you could possibly sell as efficiently as through the major e-book stores.

I don't believe Amazon will do something evil or that the other stores will go under. I'm sure Amazon are going through some difficulties right now and are trying to cut costs and to change things around to attract more customers.That's what we're seeing right now.

I'm very pleased to be out of Select and that I can now sell my books everywhere.

[Becca Mills]

I'm bummed about this too. I was just looking into selling signed paperbacks myself (as a courtesy, not for big $$$), but the thought of potentially having to remit taxes to so many nations on a quarterly basis makes it pretty much untenable. Like, if I got one or two international orders a year, whatever. More than that, and I'd be hating it. Dunno.

[scdaffron]

Actually, you don't have to worry about physical products, which includes paperbacks. So signed books are fine. Digital downloads are the problem. The whole thing is incredibly stupid particularly because the UK has a small business exemption. If you sell less than 82K pounds, you're exempt. 

Let's just say, our store isn't doing that kind of volume 

People in the US have no such exemption. I've read some advice that says just ignore it because the US has no interest in policing it. 

[Daniel]

One issue with shipping physical products internationally is that you have to deal with customs forms, which means a trip to the Post Office. Shipping fees are very high too, of course, but most shopping carts pass that along to the buyer. We sell physical books from our online store, but just to U.S. customers and mainly so they can request a signed copy.

[Becca Mills]

Yeah, the shipping fees are the main problem. It's so laborious to trek down to the post office, find out the postage on the package, go home and bill the buyer, wait for the money to arrive, and then go back to the post office to mail the thing. I'm really hoping there's some sort of international flat-rate shipping option, so that I can just ask for a flat fee from everyone.

Susan, thank you for the info about the VAT! I didn't realize it didn't apply to physical products. What a break.

[Hsin-Yi]

Dec 30, 2014 18:55:48 GMT -5 Daniel said:

One issue with shipping physical products internationally is that you have to deal with customs forms, which means a trip to the Post Office. Shipping fees are very high too, of course,

This was the reason I was doing my best to dissuade my fans from asking to buy signed copies!

Becca Becca Mills - I saw your post on Kboards but didn't really want to comment there. I went through a bit of selling signed copies for my MG mysteries and in my case, the shipping is a NIGHTMARE as I'm in Australia and most of my market is in the US/UK - it was multiple trips to the PO, lots of customs forms, wrapping the books up securely in bubblewrap to withstand the long distances and just general nuisance.

I ended up really jacking up the prices of my signed copies to try and stop people ordering them!  Well, I figured it was taking time from my writing so I needed to really make a big profit margin to make the whole thing worthwhile. I wouldn't have minded if I was in the US but from Australia... I still ended up with about 20 requests which I fulfilled (yeah, my MG series hardly sells but the few fans it has are HARDCORE! ) - but after that, I have been keeping very quiet about the possibility of signed copies. I don't advertise it on my website and just hope that nobody asks. (I didn't even advertise them to begin with - I just mentioned that I was creating some as prizes for giveaways - and then I got a flood of emails from fans asking if they could buy copies).

As a compromise - I found one thing which works well is to send a signed bookplate sticker. I've seen other authors offer this and I think readers are happy to accept this as an alternative - and it's a lot cheaper & easier for the author, especially if you're in the US (it's STILL a cost for me even to send an envelope with a bookplate - postage from Australia to anywhere is horrendous - so I've still not advertised this alternative).

[scdaffron]

Shipping internationally is a huge pain so, we turned it off on our store pretty much from the outset. In Idaho, we live many miles from the closest post office, and don't go to town more than once or twice/week. So we only ship books Priority mail because you can do "click and ship" labels online and stuff the package in the outgoing mail. The price of Priority mail keeps most people from ordering directly from us. There also are large notes on the product pages that say we only ship to US addresses and to go visit Amazon if you live somewhere else and want a copy.

A long time ago, I did have one person in the UK who really wanted one of my books. He was a serious fan and very nice, so I dropped shipped it through Lightning Source UK, which made it somewhat less expensive. But that was an anomaly. My deep loathing for shipping and the post office goes way back   

[Becca Mills]

Thanks for the feedback, guys! Susan, I'm with you on the shipping. It's a huge drag.


Hsin-Yi, I love the idea of bookplates. Did you design yours yourself? Where did you get them printed?

I'm guessing most of my requests would come from the U.S., but now that I'm up on Google, I am getting more fans from other places, so who knows. Having to ship to Australia or New Zealand or South Africa could certainly happen, and I know it'd be very pricey. Offering a bookplate would be a great solution for people who don't want to drop $40-50 on a paperback.

[Hsin-Yi]

Dec 31, 2014 16:28:07 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

Hsin-Yi, I love the idea of bookplates. Did you design yours yourself? Where did you get them printed?

I found a company online (amazing what you can find Google!) – which specialises in producing customised bookplates for authors. Here's the link: www.bookplateink.com/
you can either choose one of their designs or you can also send them something you designed yourself – like a JPEG image for them to print on the bookplates. Because this was for my MG mysteries, I used an image of  my dog's paw print, plus they added my name and website address at the bottom – it came out very well. I think I ordered about a hundred of them and it was something like $125 (sent from the US to Australia). You can see the prices on their website – or they give you a quote for the customised stuff.



But since then, I've discovered that you can actually just make customised bookplates yourself if you use something like Vistaprint – you just need to choose their sticker product and upload an image. I also decided that I was better to customise it with my book series logo branding. So I have redone some using this cheaper method and they look pretty good. I designed this one myself as I'm much better with Photoshop now. I just took one of my book covers and deconstructed it, changed the colour... so I just have the logo + Dane silhouette, which is my main branding.

Here's a picture of what the new version looks like – these are less for signing and more for giving out to kids, because I'm planning to do a few school and library visits next year (this year actually! It's 2015 already in Australia . These aren't cheap though - I think it was like $1.25 for each. (But cheaper for me coz no shipping from US). If they're popular, I'm going to look into getting stickers printed in Taiwan (where I was born), which would be VERY cheap.

[Becca Mills]

Thank you, Hsin-Yi ... especially for including photos! Both of those look really nice. I think this sounds like an excellent option -- one could offer the signed book at a high price, or the signed bookplate at $3. Terrific. Thank you!

P.S. Your doggie has big feet.

[Hsin-Yi]

Dec 31, 2014 22:57:44 GMT -5 Becca Mills said:

Thank you, Hsin-Yi ... especially for including photos! Both of those look really nice. I think this sounds like an excellent option -- one could offer the signed book at a high price, or the signed bookplate at $3. Terrific. Thank you!

P.S. Your doggie has big feet.

HAH! That was not even life size. Her paws were actually practically the whole page but it would have exceeded the size of the bookplate (and left no room for me to sign) so I had to shrink it down to around 60% of the real thing. Well, she as a GREAT Dane! (She died in Jan this year at 10yrs old - but it's nice to think of her living on in the series...)

[Daniel]

Both book plates are wonderful, Hsin-Yi. Thank you for sharing. We use VistaPrint for all kinds of things, so it's good to know about this option.

I'm sorry to hear about your Great Dane. Ten is pretty good for such a large breed, but they always go too soon. I've lost four dogs and two cats to old age and disease, and every one of them has taken a piece of my heart with them. At least I still get to visit with them once in a while in my dreams.