So, I queried having to pay Value Added Tax on a book of mine that I purchased from lulu.com. The response from the VAT people was "You pay VAT because it's in-keeping with EU legislation".
To which I responded "So, if we're not in the EU no VAT?"
And I get: "Our VAT would be set higher but that would be up for HM Government to decide"
meh. Truth is, VAT and the excessively high postage costs in Europe are killing small businesses -especially if they use online stores. "Go online -its where all the sales are coming from!" we were told. Bollocks.
Don't usually check the online store but had to for querying the VAT man (I pay tax on my stuff to be legal unlike most if not all UK Small Publishers who are hobbyists) and checked sales.
That British Golden Age Comics Collection someone purchased from Italy on 3rd February? That was it.
This is why I took the day off from drawing to do other stuff. Not as though a new book is going to get lots of sales. If books drawn by some great talents for Black Tower are not selling after all the publicity then mine are certainly not!
And Europe? Not a single response from any of the publishers there -even the ones I helped promote and it does not help that a UK company whose books I pushed from the start never, ever mention I have a book out yet for someone I know did not even think much of them when they started -he gets his book promoted on their site. Go figure.
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