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Friday 30 January 2015

FUCKING IDIOTIC WRITER MODE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

This takedown of a fucking idiotic writer won't be pleasant.
   Is there such a thing as a pleasant takedown of an idiotic writer? Yes. There are sugar sprinkles and unicorns and rainbows during a nice takedown. This story does not feature unicorns. Or sugar sprinkles. There is no rainbow at the gold's end, and no bloody gold anyway.


*


Bloodied gold would be a fucking luxury. At least you could wash your hands with it. Er. Right, moving on...

*

I've written about backing your work up. The best form of doing this is still publication. Shove your stories out there.

*

For those who came in late, here are a few posts on archiving. I'll wait for you.

AN ARCHIVAL REPORT.

YET ANOTHER ARCHIVAL REPORT.

A SCINTILLATING REPORT ON MATTERS OF COMPUTING.


*

Shit flows uphill if it is runny and the wind is strong enough.


*

Okay. Back up your files. Save copies in multiple locations. Publish. Have several profiles running on your computer, in the event of profile failure. This much we know, based on the reports listed above.


*

Of course I'm the fucking idiotic writer being taken down.


*

I did something unbelievably fucking stupid when it came to creating and saving files. It doesn't fucking matter that this only applied to three items.
   They were images and not stories. Doesn't fucking matter.
   We aren't talking about screwing up an entire novel, massive bundles of text, or tax forms. Doesn't fucking matter.
   It was all still fucked up, just the same.


*

Shit flows downhill. That's a system. I use it. The system works. I only deviate from the system to improve the system. That's what I tell myself. Usually, it's true. I do the right thing.


*

What I don't do is switch to FUCKING IDIOTIC WRITER mode.


*

And now, to our story.
   It wasn't a stormy windswept potato-mashed night. The system worked. Save everything and copy everything to multiple locations.
   But wait a bit. How do I generate files? Where is the source of this digital Nile? On a computer that is not connected to the internet, that's where. That computer sits next to an external hard drive.
   Or the external hard drive sets next to the computer.
   Microsoft Word creates its own backup files. Beyond that basic level of automation, the extra hard drive is usually the first port of call when it comes to backing things up.
   That is, unless I back things up on a USB device before reaching for the external drive. Or, for reasons technical and strange, I might make a copy of everything and store that archive on the same computer. Temporarily.
   Anyway, there is no internet at the SOURCE.
   The internet computer lives a short walk away from the SOURCE. A device must be carried along the hallway to the other place, to reach the shores of the internet. That device unloads its data after a physical journey involving footsteps.
   Whirrr, click. Now there's ANOTHER copy of the material, on the internet computer's hard drive. Hooray. A few more clicks, and that new archive is saved yet again - to the cloud.


*

Copied archives are special. They are only added to from sources generated in another room.
   Water flows from the SOURCE.
   If an archive stands in the way for technical reasons, the whole archive is blasted and replaced - though even outdated and outmoded archives survive: you never know. The last file that went all corrupt on me was the profile mentioned back there in my scintillating report on matters of computing.
   The rule...
   I don't generate new files and store them solely in the copied archives. That way lies madness. New files must be housed at the SOURCE and cloned to other locations.
   Always.


*

Everything was backed up.
   Move on. Year's end. Time to create the final back up copy - a DVD, set away in a fireproof safe.
   And that means it's time to check the files, in case there are bullshit items - definitely no longer required.
   I've grown more careful about that final check down the years, not less careful. The process takes longer each year. Well, true, there's more content. But, even so.


*

This year, I sit down and have the strange sensation that I created files and dropped them solely into a copied archive. In the wrong territory. Not at the SOURCE.
   I mean I walked into another room, created files, and dumped items in the archived copy there.
   Are you sure?
   I'm not sure. But if the hunch is right, then...
   These files don't exist in the ORIGINAL archive. If I lost all the back up copies, and kept the original archive, all would be well in computer land, right...
   Except.
   Wait.
   I created some files.
   Yes.
   And I dropped them in the archive when I was done.
   Right.
   Just checking this.
   Sure, sure.
   But. I was sitting in a different chair.
   No.
   Facing a different way.
   Are you certain?
   So I must have been in the other room.
   Come on. Shit doesn't flow uphill. You wouldn't generate new content and dump it in one isolated copied archive. All copied archives are the same. Those containment barrels never turn radioactive. Clones are each other.
   But...
   Seriously. The last time you messed with files, this way, was NEVAH!!!
   There's always the outside chance that I've screwed this up beyond all recognition without setting off a single alarm until now, here, at the year's end. Based on an inkling of a twinkling of a hunch.
   Well, you'd better fucking check more than the mere memory of which fucking way you were sitting when you made shit up.


*

I checked. There were all sorts of warped possibilities. I wanted to avoid adding problems to the mix. After checking thousands of files in countless folders, using a few sideways moves and arcane detection that I'm not even sure qualifies as a computer technique...
   There.
   Three blog-related files, all images, jumped for my throat. Well. Fuck.


*

Narrative.
   I was seated at this computer. Files were required. I summoned those files from the back up archive on this machine.
   And then I generated new content from those archived files. I mashed a few new pictures together out of old photos, basically.
   AT THAT POINT, I should have copied the new files to a USB device and marched them along to the original depository at the SOURCE.
   But I didn't reach for a USB drive. I stared at three new files on my desktop, and slotted them into the right folder in the back up archive.
   No big deal? They were in the right folder, right.
   Oh, yes, big deal...


*

Until I found those three files, and realised what I'd done, I was convinced that I'd written new story material on the wrong computer, and sidelined important content into a dusty file folder that might never see the light of day again.


*

Where the fuck is that story I wrote, and what the fuck was it anyway?
   It wasn't quite real. Didn't exactly exist. Reaching for one big folder, three thousand files later, I knew that as truth.
   The story material? Was real. Stored at the SOURCE, as well as in the cloned archives. Same as fucking usual. I just mixed the creation of a tale with the generation of a few images, and lost myself in the shuffle.
   Digital sigh.


*

The story I wrote was safe. Three minor blog-related pictures laughed at me. I know echoes of them laughed in my e-mail in-box, for the published blog is sent there as another form of archiving.


*

Same shit every fucking January. Throughout the year, files are saved, peacefully, and all is right with the world. Come year's end and year's start, there's this business of picking through bones in the fire, looking out for quirks, mistakes, and fucking stupid computer moves.


*

To my knowledge, that's the first time I violated the inviolable rule concerning archives. The archives are for dumping copies in, not for losing original files in.
   I could have fucked that up spectacularly. Luckily, I didn't screw anything around too badly. The potential was there.
   Lesson. The old one. Don't just archive. Check your archives.


*

I'm going to leave out a detailed description of all the possible combinations of wrongness I waded through, in checking files.
   It isn't enough to count folders and files and think, when numbers tally, that the main vault and the archive copy somehow magically match.
   No. I checked file-creation times and data-sizes. Yes, it's a lot of fun and I recommend having a go. Mm.
   Haven't lost a file yet. Ditched plenty of files and folders that deserved to die. I killed them with fire, and citrus-sprayed the remains.


*

The end? It never ends. The fun keeps funning. Even organising your files, regularly backing things up, a few items drift. Generally, drifting equals needless duplication of material.
   Better to have too many files than too few. All files are copied. Precaution is nicer than caution.
   As I sit here, the three troublesome items are duplicated. But they were automatically copied on blog publication, when the blog posts went to my e-mail.
   I didn't know, when my spider-sense tingled, what the problem was. Could have been Doctor Octopus, for all I knew. I thought a story went astray, and not a mere three images.
   The creation of three wayward files represented the evil tip of a satanic iceberg. That's the awkward lumbering point I faced. Real or imagined, the iceberg was checked. Coffee featured heavily in my plans.


*

There's not enough coffee in the world. After writing this blog post, I decided to REALLY check things. Conclusion? My archival vaults are part of a strange cosmic joke.
   These cloned files don't quite match up. Year on year, variations sneak in. My solution is to stagger march in there and standardise everything.
   Much of the information was in a standard format. But much is not all. I changed this thing one year and that thing the next. Only at a distance of several years, coffee to hand, do I detect the remains of the tangled path I walked.
   I may squeeze another blog post out of this. Or not.


Saturday 24 January 2015

EXERCISE FOR WRITERS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Cue training montage.
   Not really.
   Cue draining training montage.
   Again, no, not really.


*

Last week I blogged about timing myself walking a mile. The goal was to walk that mile faster than a tortoise would crawl it.
   I managed this feat. With feet.
   Was I going to dawdle, and cover a mile in twenty minutes? No. The internet decided that pace was comfortable. But walking a mile in fifteen minutes is also comfortable.
   I walked a mile in just under twelve minutes. Comfortably. Easily. No hassle. The goal was to improve on the time, daily. See how I'd go.
   Improve? Drop from one minute to the next, each day. An eleven-minute stroll becomes a ten-minute journey a day later. Until I reach the end.
   I say journey. Hell, I say stroll...
   After a few days, the walk turned into a run. That was expected. The experience became less comfortable. That, too, was expected.


*

Covering a mile is all about pacing. Well, no. Determination is required. Once you actually go for it, though, it's about pacing. And losing the plot is annoying.
   How did I do?
   Saturday - 11:45. I completed the quest to walk a mile without crossing the tedious twenty-minute barrier. It's difficult to walk a mile in twelve minutes if you have a broken leg. This timed mile tells me I didn't have a broken leg on the day.
   Was the trip stressful? No. That was the comfortable mile.


*

Sunday - 10:35. I completed the basic task with ease. Covering a mile. The advanced task was to drop from eleven minutes (and something seconds) to ten. I managed that without breaking anything.
   These slower miles were covered while watching items on the YouTube. The faster you hit that treadmill, the louder you must set the sound. To hear a YouTube video while running a six-minute mile, you turn the volume to DREADFUL.


*

Monday - 8:11. Pacing went to hell. I thought I wasn't going to drop to a nine-minute mile, and ended up bypassing the whole point of the exercise.
   Do the job and gradually increase the pace. Well, I lost the plot and skipped a notch. Still, going faster than intended set me up for the next stage.


*

Tuesday - 7:07. I managed this. And I knew I'd make it. At times, I wondered if I'd slide off the treadmill and disappear into a pile of books. No slithering occurred.


*

Wednesday - 6:18. And thanks for stopping by. Going faster than that requires a level of dedication to pacing that borders on the lunatic.


*

Thursday - I'm not sure what happened. Did I crack the barrier or not? The time was slightly over six minutes, but not as slow as Wednesday's result.
   I'd set the electric gadget to scan.
   Every five seconds, the scan switches to a new statistic. Distance covered. Five seconds later, Time spent running. Another five seconds, and Speed comes up.
   I ran, covering 0.99 of a mile. The scan changed to time spent. I was coming up on six minutes. But I could no longer see the distance. The scan continued, and I was shown speed for a few seconds. I ignored time and speed results.
   When the distance came around again, I saw I'd covered 1.01. Somewhere in that scanned data, I passed a mile. Maybe I did it inside six minutes, or maybe just a few seconds outside.


*

I proved to myself what I'd suspected. Daily, I could increase running speed and pacing, and knock the time down close to six minutes...
   The closer to six minutes I went, the harder the task became. Not because I was shattered by the experience. Because pacing is bloody important.
   On the treadmill, losing the rhythm, you could slide off into a pile of books. (I moved books out of the way, to avoid problems.)
   The run was about setting a strong pace over the first quarter-mile, then ensuring a steady run for half a mile, with some puff in reserve for the final quarter-mile.
   Friday, I have the day off. Already, I am thinking of throwing in exercise biking to see how I'd handle that.


*

Yes, there's a coded message in all this. About writing. Having the determination to start. And that's all you need. The determination to start.
   That determination is the same determination required to continue, once you've started.
   Pacing is important. Writing a novel, start strong. Get on with it. Cover that first quarter. You are a long way from the finish. Slog on.
   Develop a sense of pace when writing. Oh, you can't force art. That's true. And you can take a day off - that's required. But, for fuck's sake, in amongst all that random stuff, create something.
   I'm going to look at the exercise bike. Biking, indoors. Zero rain. I like the sound of that. Staring out into the rainy gloom, I like that a lot.
   Also, I'll be sitting down.


Saturday 17 January 2015

WRITING EXERCISE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Exercise for writers.
   I'm sitting here wondering how long it would take to cover a mile. The average walking speed is based on the fatter person's resistance to oncoming wind - whether straight or from the side.

*

Research indicates that comfortable walking speed is, on average, around three miles per hour. It becomes harder to walk faster and still call the slog walking.
   Slog becomes jog. Soon, you are running.
   It's hard to walk more and more slowly. Why walk at half the speed? Unless you are inching your way through a space packed with fragile objects.
   By fragile objects, I meant landmines. Or a mousetrap with an egg in it, set to launch the egg at another mousetrap with an egg in it. And so on.

*

I've often written that you should take breaks. Nothing worse than finding your leg dead from pins and needles. Well, Deep Vein Thrombosis is worse than that. Amputation followed by death. Going out on a limb, there.
   So, yes, take breaks from writing. Don't just empty your bladder where you sit. Go to the specialised room for that.

*

Exercise. I think I'll try me some o' that. What will I get out of it? A blog post. Over the next week, I'll discover how long it takes to cover a mile. Comfortably.
   If I do three miles per hour, then I'll cover the distance in a rather tedious twenty minutes. That's grim. I've checked the weather, and the weather is grim...
   So I'll be walking on the treadmill. And the thought of doing a casual mile over twenty minutes, on a treadmill, is enough to drive me to hot chocolate.

*

What do I want to achieve? I'll switch the distance-ometer on, and watch the numbers crawl by. This is a writing exercise. How much exercise can the writer get through?
   This isn't about the amount of words we could all try to write in a day. It's about finding how fast we can move over a mile. Sadly, I know running is involved at the later stages of this madness.
   Goal. Walk a mile in twenty minutes. Or whatever it takes. Certainly not more than twenty minutes. Then. Cut the time. Daily. Better it. See how much exercise there is to do.
   Take it gradually.
   Indoors.
   With a timer ticking.
   And, daily, improve. Down to what? I'll blog next week, and see how I did. How will you do? You'll just not bother. Or do about the same. Maybe you'll do better.
   Hell, maybe I'll not bother. :0


Friday 9 January 2015

MELISSA C. WATER AND LADY INJURY UPDATE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Last night I featured in a live news broadcast.
   Not really.
   But that's what it felt like. There was a broadcast. And it was live. News burst forth.

*

I'm editing Lady Injury by Melissa C. Water. Last night, she put up a link announcing a live streaming video event. I was waging war on supper, and spotted her announcement minutes before she was due to go out into the ether.
   So I battled a baguette.

*

At the same time, I navigated the murky waters of yet another social media site: YOUNOW. Where, now? All was not lost. I could sign in using the Twitter, AND fight a baguette.
   This is the concept of war on two fronts - the first front being the front of your jumper, down which a river of crumbs cascades.
   Twirl your Twitter password as a master-key, and enter other sites. Open, Sesame Street! (No one has misappropriated the contents of my fridge as a result of app authorisation.)

*

I was demolishing a baguette. Earlier. In the kitchen. The baguette fell apart. I took the opporchancity to create two baguette feasts out of the wreckage. There was a dash of egg mayonnaise left, and that went to the wreck of the bow section. The stern lifeboat was already filled by chicken.
   Which to eat first, the chicken or the egg mayonnaise?

*

Coffee served as the torpid wave carrying these two boats. The meal unfurled into a slow crumb-festooned affair.

*

This was no boating accident. I struggled, manfully, with baguettes and unfamiliar social networking sites. Finally, Melissa was announced by the YOUNOW digital butler.
   I tuned in.

*

Melissa spoke of many things, for many questions were asked of her. A live video question and answer session...didn't quite feel like that, to me.
   No. To me, this was a live news broadcast from our roving reporter in French Canada. Soon, Melissa dealt with questions concerning her book, Lady Injury, and the steps being taken to bring out a second edition.
   She announced the news. Melissa was working with a really great guy...
   Wait.
   What the fudge?!
   Rewind.
   Is she talking about me?!
   Damn it, I am grumpy and curmudgeonly and evil. I have my own Top Secret Volcano Base - it says so on my Twitter profile. No one believes any of that. But it's true, I tell you. It's true - I snarl at kittens and burst the balloons of small children.
   Except for that last part about the kittens and the children. But I genuinely have a large tank filled with rippy fish. It's on Pirate Google Maps.

*

This event of Melissa's was a news broadcast about publishing activity. Instead of going through the highways and byways of the process with her audience, Melissa gave out her character appraisal of me.
   Her broadcast was a show. Not quite TV, and not quite radio. Internetty. As in...interconnected and interactive. I sent a message saying she'd destroyed my grumpy reputation...
   Though, in fairness, she's not the first to have a go at dispelling my grumpy online persona.
   I told her audience that, yes, we were working on Melissa's memoir. She told the viewers that I was watching. Then she said I bore the brunt of the editing work we collaborated on.
   To me, it's a sound participatory process. Writer and editor are not adversaries, knocking chunks out of the surrounding landscape from the safety of our giant robot suits.
   No. We combine forces to lift a book into place. Well, she was very nice about it all in saying that I was very nice about it all.
   Her show gradually mutated into a wildlife documentary. Parrots featured. Melissa covered her usual topics: self-harm, eating-disorders, advice on therapy, medicine...
   She made the time in her hour-long chat to chat for longer than an hour, celebrating with the audience member who was free of self-harm, discussing musical tastes, and sharing knowing comments with her sister.
   I'll link to Melissa's YouTube channel below.

*

What is the news, concerning her book? After stopping and starting for assorted reasons, we are now near the end of primary editing. Once that is out of the way, there are technical considerations to deal with.
   We'll both go in and look at the book from some distance - that's one of the reasons for stopping and starting. You really need to sit a work aside and let it cool.
   Anyway. We are getting there. The second edition will be out this year. From our chats, I know Melissa would like to publish a paperback version at the same time, using CreateSpace, but I've been concentrating on the Kindle copy. I can't guarantee a simultaneous launch.

*

Now I must take my leave of ye, to feed the rippy fish and work on my evil laugh. My balloon-popping skills are growing rusty - which is for the best, if you are evil. Rust adds to the terror.

*

Image of Melissa C. Water is copyright to her, 2015, and is used by kind persimmons. Find her YouTube channel HERE.

Saturday 3 January 2015

UPDATE TO THE VAT UPDATE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Overnight, the system settled down. WITCHES was the last book to switch to the lower price in America. Come morning, Amazon had sent out ten publication messages. The last product to run through the system was VAMPIRES.
   I definitely need to write a Zombie Zoo story. When updating books, I suspect WITCHES would still come in last.
   Never mind all that. I'd said that there was a filter on the American Amazon page that told me to go elsewhere to buy my e-books.
   That filter was gone this morning. It may have been VAT-related while my prices were set at the old rates. Or perhaps pixies were responsible. I wasn't talking about the other thing.
   The other thing is a warning that your Kindle is registered in a particular area, so buy your books from the relevant site. No, not that. I never even crawled close to that sub-warning.
   This was something else.
   Something else is now gone, along with the morning mist a fiery sun chose to bake to nothingness.
   I just want one button on the internet that does everything - including undoing everything I just did by pressing it in the first place.

Friday 2 January 2015

VAT UPDATE: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Had a look at my prices on both sides of the ocean, and that's the fastest any of my files went through the publishing process. The changes are done.
   Maybe the files changed within minutes, as pricing was the only alteration. The same publishing quirk is still in force. Updating all the products, the last to go through is always WITCHES.
   Even though it is often sent through before the others, some alphabetical queue forms around the titles and that one stumbles in at the end. I'll have to put out a zombie story, then republish everything, to see if the glitch still applies.
   Within minutes of my earlier blog, I was e-mailed by Amazon about VAT changes. I'd stared at the pricing grid and wondered about the cost over in Italy.
   There's an extra quirk in Italy's pricing. There's a special rate of VAT for e-books with ISBN. Without ISBN, the tax is 22%, but, with one, the rate drops to 4% - a level of near-Luxembourgian luxury, Jeeves.
   Will I rush off and add ISBN to my books? (Technically, Neon Gods has an ISBN. It's sitting there on a CreateSpace bookshelf, struggling to come to life.)
   If all EU territories instituted a harmonised 4% VAT rate for e-books with ISBN, then hell, yes, I'd sort out that shit, your honour.

*

The cost of my gerbil porn fell on this side of the ocean. No need to thank me.

*

This post was scribbled within two hours of the last one I did on VAT. Usually, a republished book cycles through in four hours. This time, everything except WITCHES was up and running at the new same prices.
   Okay, well, no.
   Here, in Scotlandia, the books all cost the same as before. The gerbil porn is £0.06 cheaper. Don't go wild on the saving.
   Over in Americaland, all prices fell slightly. WITCHES will toe the line come tomorrow morning, or I'll know the reason why. Grrr. Mutter. Mumble. Pretend grumpiness. Etc.

VAMPIRE ADDED TAX: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

I'm going to reprint an e-mail from Amazon, concerning a change to VAT. Exciting stuff, I know.


*

On January 1, 2015, European Union (EU) tax laws regarding the taxation of digital products (including eBooks) will change: previously, Value Added Tax (VAT) was applied based on the seller’s country – as of January 1st, VAT will be applied based on the buyer’s country.


*

Let me stop you there.
   Ah, Luxembourg.
   Once upon a tax-wheeze, Government decided that the act of selling a transmitted product was the providing of a SERVICE. This attracted VAT.
   The nature of the service was unimportant. Paper books are zero-rated for VAT. Electronic books are delivered via digital transmission, and attract VAT - much in the style of shit summoning flies.
   For a time, VAT on e-books added a 20% tax. Luxembourg ran a lower rate of 3% for this, provided the company concerned was based in, koff, koff, Luxembourg.
   Why are all these companies suddenly doing business from offices in Luxembourg, you ask?
   COINCIDENCE.
   Running your business from Luxembourg? Why, that's 3% VAT to you, and you are welcome. Your customers are happy. All is right with the world.
   But now that's all gone. The purchaser's location determines the rate of VAT applied. If you bought a book out of thin air off Amazon, you unwittingly purchased that electronic tome from Luxembourg and THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE, DAMN IT!
   No more. Let's delve into that Amazon message again.
   
*

As a result, starting on January 1st, KDP authors must set list prices to be inclusive of VAT. We will also make a one-time adjustment for existing books published through KDP to move from VAT-exclusive list prices to list prices which include VAT.
   We'll put these changes into effect starting January 1st; you may always change your prices at any time, but you do not need to take any action unless you wish to do so.

Learn more about the new minimum and maximum KDP EU list prices:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=ANRML55B0BWBK

Learn more about how EU prices affect royalty payments:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A30XCAGX3E5QDC


*

No need to do anything. Is it important? Amazon runs a two-tier rate for royalties. If you want the higher rate, you'll have to satisfy certain price conditions.
   A VAT-related alteration to price might throw you across a threshold into a different level of royalty. The Amazon e-mail handed me a warning...

*

eBooks in the 70% royalty plan need to meet new minimum list price requirements.

You currently have one or more books in the 70% royalty plan that will not meet the new minimum list price requirements. To make sure that your books still meet the minimum list price required for the 70% royalty plan after January 1, we'll adjust the new list price that includes VAT to £1.99 and € 2.99 in order to meet the minimum for 70% royalty.

Setting List Prices for EU Kindle stores.

Starting January 1st, to make it easier to set customer friendly list prices without having to calculate VAT for each country, authors will set list prices for EU marketplaces that include VAT.
   To accommodate this, the KDP pricing grid will be updated to accept VAT-inclusive list prices. Previously, if an author wanted to provide a suggested list price of “£1.99”, he would have to set “£1.93” as the VAT-exclusive list price to account for the 3% VAT we would have applied.
   Now, authors can simply enter “£1.99” and we will deduct the applicable VAT to calculate royalties. In the pricing page, authors will also see their suggested price without VAT displayed for the primary country of the marketplace to help them understand how royalties will be calculated for sales to customers from that primary country. 

Learn more about setting list prices for EU Kindle stores:
https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A30464Q6OVH578

We think that respecting your VAT-exclusive list prices and keeping books in their chosen royalty plans offers the best experience for authors. If you would like your books to be handled in a different way, contact us with your feedback:
https://kdp.amazon.com/contact-us?topicId=euvat

Best Regards,
Kindle Direct Publishing Team.

*

This annoyed me. VAT always annoys me. What was the upshot of the change, when the bells finished tolling and 2015 stumbled in out of the rain?
   Fuck knows.
   I had a look on Amazon sales pages on both sides of the Atlantic. And I checked my Amazon bookshelf too. The bookshelf has new entries to take account of the VAT alteration.
   Here in Scotlandia, a 20% rate now applies. The sweet 3% Luxembourg rate is a thing of the past. So...
   I should be able to see, at the clichéd glance, how things stand.
   Er...

*

I've looked at my books on sale.
   When I set the price for Neon Gods, I had to muck around with the bookshelf until I chose a dollar price that translated into a sterling price of £4 once VAT was included.
   Fiddly. But I managed. My price points were £2 for anything up to 50,000 words, £4 up to 200,000, and over £6 for anything larger.
   At the £6 end of the scale, I was close to the maximum dollar price for the 70% royalty, so I pushed the price up a little higher to take account of later vagaries in the exchange - if I reset the price during a Financial Apocalypse, say.
   On the day that I set the price for VAMPIRES, I faced 3% VAT on £1.94 to give the customer a book at £2. Staring at the change now, the book will jump to £2.33 if I update the file. Or I can revise down to keep the price at £2...
   Well, no. Depends where the purchaser lives. Staring at the charts for assorted EU territories, I see fluctuations in the Euro prices.
   The Single European Currency is used by most EU countries, and so the price should be the same in each country. Not so. That tells me these countries have differing VAT rates...for now.
   This all sounds like an evil ploy to bring harmony to differing levels of VAT on e-books in the long-term. And screw the customer. Also, to hell with the writers.
   Harmony. You know. Straight out of that scene in Revenge of the Sith. We've shredded the heroes. Now we'll have peace. That kind of harmony.
   Not the harmony of applying 3% VAT to all territories, but the rising tide of bringing everyone into line at 20% VAT.
   To keep the cost of VAMPIRES the same after accepting VAT changes, I'd have to knock $0.09 off the cost at tonight's rate.
   Meanwhile, over in the USA I see a glitch. When I land on one of my books, it costs the price I've set. (Wow. That's just fucking amazing. Who knew?!)
   Mutter mumble. When I go further into the system, I see a different price in dollars. And when I go to the point of purchase, I am told that I can buy this book from where I am...and not from the USA. So no price is listed.
   This added filter must be related to the VAT thing. I've not encountered it before, bold-as-you-please, on a purchase page.
   As I am looking from over here, the VAT is inescapable. I can't see what Americans, living in the land of the VAT-free, are being asked to pay for my books.
   The price I set, I'd guess. But I can't see, for certain.

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This is annoying. It shouldn't be.

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Amazon put in a VAT calculator for me. I choose the pre-tax price, and I can see the end price right in front of me, on the instant. Well, the end prices for different territories.
   That is convenient, I won't deny. No more fiddling around one cent at a time, accepting a dollar value that then converts to sterling, with a guessing-game at the end over the exact decimal fraction that trudges to the mystical price of asking.
   Yes, that bit is handy. Would've been nice of Amazon to include it before. But never mind all that. It's here now.

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Separate issue? The shift in the rate of VAT erodes value. Yes, Value Added Tax will cost you. Do I reduce my prices, to keep them standing still for the consumer? (Depending where the consumer lives?)
   Or do I adjust to the new VAT regime and let the prices bump up?

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I was annoyed at the change, and for reasons of simplicity I WAS going to throw the prices up slightly. But the fluctuation in the exchange softened the blow a little since last I set prices...
   So dropping $0.09 off a title to let the price stand still...is the price of doing business. It's less aggravating to me than it is to my customers.
   My domestic customers will see no increase in prices. And my American customers will see a slight reduction. The VAT shakeout is a one-time thing. (A lie was told there, surely. But I DO believe in fairies. I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.)
   VAT. Pah.
   I think my gerbil porn comes out slightly cheaper domestically. And on that note, having just altered the prices, I'll publish this blog. It'll take maybe four hours for the new same prices to cycle through.
   That's my cue for a coffee.