Showing posts with label EU VAT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label EU VAT. Show all posts

And a Very Happy and Successful 2015!

My lovely haunted cupboard.
One of the nice things about living here in a small Scottish village is that for a few days and sometimes weeks after New Year's Eve, every time you meet a friend or acquaintance for the first time, they will shake hands or kiss you (or both) and wish you a 'happy new year!' There's something quite cheering about getting so many good wishes in such a short space of time.

Have just spent two good working days when I ought to have been writing, taking down and putting away Christmas decorations. And cleaning up the resulting chaos of dust, pine needles, dried up holly leaves and general domestic disorder. And trying to come to terms with the slight feeling of let-down because I love Christmas, coupled with the overwhelming sensation of panic at the amount of writing I now have to do.

It will get done. It always does.

Have also, however, been distracted by the EU and its new VAT regulations on digital downloads. Fortunately, Amazon and D2D, my distributors of choice are handling the nuts and bolts. Not quite sure what my trad publishers are doing about it yet. But it still means higher prices for eBooks for which I apologise now, to my readers and potential readers. I'll still keep them as low as possible, within reason.

There's also a certain amount of work for me while I decide how much of this price increase I can afford to absorb, and lots more business for Amazon, which I suspect was not really the intention of this bad, stupid, ill thought out law. It was no doubt developed by a bunch of Brussels fat cats who haven't a scoobie how digital sales work, and whose salaries are so monumental that it never crosses their minds than anyone might have to supplement their meagre incomes with a micro-business or two. And even if it does cross their minds, they will probably be of the 'let them eat cake' persuasion.

Meanwhile, if you want to know the kind of thing that really goes on in a small Scottish village in winter, you could always read Ice Dancing.  It's very authentic!