An open letter to Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble and Kobo (Reductio ad absurdum 4)

Dear sirs,
During the course of an investigation into VAT on ebooks for a UK petition it has come to my attention that you owe me money. Apparently you have been overcharging myself and millions of other customers in 25 of the 28 EU countries.

The problem is your VAT charge. The EU states that ebooks are 'a digital delivery service' and that countries in the EU must charge standard VAT rates for this service. I have no problem with that. However you have charged VAT on the full ebook price rather than on the 'digital delivery' part of the ebook. This charge varies from book to book dependant on the file size. To simplify I suggest you apply a standard 10¢ US charge for delivery. In my own country, the UK, this would have a 20% standard VAT rate applied and would cost £0.02 per ebook.

Naturally calculating the refund due to all customers in the EU, (apart from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Denmark which do not have a reduced VAT charge for books,) would be a tremendously complex task. Getting a refund from VAT paid to the EU might also prove an overly complex task also. As a result I, and I presume the rest of the EU, am prepared to waive any refund due on the understanding that in future you apply no more than £0.02 for digital delivery VAT on each future ebook purchased.

No doubt the EU will query the reduced VAT payable. However I believe you have the means to meet any necessary challenges in court and in doing so will earn the eternal gratitude of your customers. I suspect that the reduced VAT charge will lead to increased sales of ebooks and increased profits for the authors and yourselves. The move to ebooks, in turn, will do wonders for the environment.

You might also warn the proprietors of e-zines and e-newspapers that a similar reduced VAT charge will apply to them.

Yours faithfully

John Chapman

How can a small bookshop make money from ebooks?

Bookshops everywhere are worried. There's a revolution going on and they are losing sales because of it. The revolution is that of ebooks!

Oh I know there are those who say 'I love the feel and smell of a proper book' but these are mostly people who have not yet got an ebook reader. Once these people have got their hands on one it doesn't take long for them to change their minds. That means fewer sales of paper books.

Yet we all still like going to the library and browsing the books in a bookstore. Having found the book we like do we then buy the paper format or simply make a note of it and look it up at Amazon later to get it in ebook format? I have to admit, I've done the latter many times but felt guilty that I've denied the bookseller a profit from the sale. He/she has, after all, helped me in my book purchase.

So how can the bookstore make money from ebooks? I think there is an answer, and one which is simple to put in practice.

How a bookstore can cash-in on ebooks

The bookseller makes use of Amazon's affiliate program (or others such as Smashwords.) Here's how to do this:

1. If you, the bookseller, have not already joined Amazon's associate program then sign up for it at:
   UK - https://affiliate-program.amazon.co.uk/
   US - https://affiliate-program.amazon.com
2. If you do not have a Twitter account then sign up for that at
   https://twitter.com/
3. Add the site stripe to your Amazon account
   https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/join/landing/tools.html
4. On your computer navigate to a book's page at Amazon and click the Twitter button on the associate site stripe toolbar
   
   
   Copy the text as far as the 'via@...
5. Paste that text into a QL generator page on Internet. I use the QR Code generator at http://goqr.me/
   
   At this stage you can edit the text to include the price and any other details you wish to include.
6. Copy the QR code generated and paste it into Word for further editing as follows:
   
7. Print this out on a self adhesive label and fix it inside the back cover (or on the back if there's space). You might also need to make a few posters advertising your ebook service and where the customer can get a free QR code scanner app for their mobile phone. (Try QR Droid) 

Customers browsing your books can scan the QR codes and buy the books immediately using Amazon's 'one touch'. You get the commission on the sale. 

Of course there is no reason why this should be restricted to using Amazon as an ebook provider. If an author comes into your store promoting his/her books negotiate a deal with them to sell their ebooks through Smashwords - Not only do they support more reading devices but they provide a higher royalty rate to the author - 85% and the affiliate rate can be set so that you get a higher commission on the sale than you would get from Amazon 30-40% would seem fair.

You might even end up making more money from ebooks than you do from paper books and you won't have to do a thing at the till!