International Shipping/Girl Genius

[Alden Loveshade]

How much trouble would it be to have items printed in the country that wants them to avoid international shipping?

I'm guessing there's problems with doing that I don't know about.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Alden Loveshade

How much trouble would it be to have items printed in the country that wants them to avoid international shipping?

I'm guessing there's problems with doing that I don't know about.

For short books, it's barely possible. There are outlets in the UK, Canada, and Australia (Mixam for all three) that are more or less affordable and produce high-quality results, in minimum order quantities low enough that getting enough to make it worthwhile to PRINT is not crazy-talk.

The EU almost certainly has something similar, and I know of one printer in Amsterdam that is gearing up for short-run digital printing with MOQ as low as 30 (MOQ for Mixam is...a single copy, but it's unwise to do them at that low volume), which will open up the EU.

Getting them from printer to customer requires an intermediary willing to do the work. In the UK, there's ShipQuest and Kixto, and I think Dice and Lattes does something like that in Canada. I'm not sure about Australia, and Shipquest does have a branch in Germany.

Taxes are still complicated for all concerned, no matter what, and require VAT registration. At least in the UK, the VAT rate is zero for books, but that doesn't get you off the hook, and mistakes and mis-classifications can be made. I recently paid $400 in VAT charges on books coming from my home in the USA to the UK because UPS couldn't read the harmonization code or apply the relevant section of the law correctly. They also told my shipper one thing and me another in terms of how the money was being assigned. So much chicanery. (Note that it was $400 in fees but only $160 in shipping cost, for a plus-up on shipping cost of 250%. I do expect to get this back eventually, since books ARE zero-rate...but that requires administration and work which is not budgeted for, etc).

For hardbacks, or really any book that starts to get chunky, or ALL books that you want to have special bindings for, like sewn lay-flat, you need to print in quantities of 500 or (ideally) 1000 or more.

So that kills local printing for the kind of books you want to have more of immediately, Dead-on-Arrival, non-starter.

[Alden Loveshade]

DouglasCole, thanks for a very thorough answer!