Thread by @HenninghamPress

Time is money. If it takes twice as long to do something you earn half as much. This is the brutal fact at the heart of Brexit.

Let’s "Brexit" a £12.99 paperback, blow by blow, and see what difference leaving the single market has made.

A paperback is made of paper but Britain does not make paper like that. Until recently we had Sweden, Germany, Italy and France to do that for us. (Nor are Britons likely to engineer paper soon: Gmund is 195 years old. Munken is 150).

All that paper has to cross the channel...

Before January 2021 paper took a couple of days to arrive, but now it can take weeks. By 2022 stockpiles were running out. Prices were also going up by 20-40%. According to the government this was due to an energy crisis in Europe, but we asked our suppliers...

The real cost is paying for the queues of lorries waiting at the border. Businesses are paying ground-rent for trucks parked on the motorway.

Let's print the covers. Last year we printed covers for two books on a standard paper from Italy: Fedrigoni. Both times we bought the last 150 remaining sheets in the whole of the United Kingdom.

Here we are printing gold on covers. But Britain doesn't make these foils. They come from South Korea and the USA. But they are imported into the EU before selling into member states. And all that has to come across the channel...

Shall we choose a paper for our paperback...?

NO! That's the tyranny of choice you endured under previous Labour governments. These days we have ONE paper because it takes 3 months to arrive in the print works stockpile.

The print works has still had to raise prices by 20-40% since 2021. This book is getting expensive!

Before Jan 2021, the DTI assured us there would be no customs charges on a £12.99 paperback. They were wrong. Publishers of every size held emergency meetings just before Christmas 2020 when we discovered postage to the EU would simply cease.

If neither the customer nor the seller had paid the tax on a parcel, Royal Mail would not send it. They couldn't take all the post to France and bring it straight back again! But how does the tax get paid? And how do customs get notified?

For only £2 per parcel you can use Taxamo pay-as-you-go. But wait! This adds 15% to the cost of the transaction. But that's only a charge for tracking the tax...

So the customer is paying £16 for a £12.99 book and I'm paying £2 just to collect their tax. I can opt to pay their tax for them and not lose a customer to Amazon but that means I'm paying £5 to do business I didn't in 2020. 38%!

Impossible.

So let's try an "IOSS" agent. This agency will charge about £2000 a year to collect tax on up to 2500 packages. That's 3% added if we sell 2500. Great! But to break even we need to be selling c.1000 books a year into the EU they could get cheaper on Amazon...

It's like how a lack of small venues prevents bands building up a fanbase. A big firm (Iron Maiden) will survive with higher costs, but how do new businesses (say... Sudan Archives) acquire 1000 EU customers?

At our current export rates, it will cost £37 per £12.99 book merely to collect the VAT. 280%

I guess the government want us to stick to playing spoons down the pub....

There is an elegant solution (if you agree two kids crammed into a big coat trying to get into a cinema is elegant).

Marketplaces such as ebay and Etsy are sucking up the Westminster damage by lending us their IOSS number.

Ok, let's post 4 books. It's taken a morning to pack them and print labels, £70 worth of time. Simple validation software doesn't belong in this 4 Yorkshiremen sketch we call an economy. But its my own time so it will only register in the UK's perpetual productivity crisis.

Youngsters won't remember just bunging a stamp on and dropping it in a box. That was before we realised it was better for us to have a border where we could count out all the parcels like a couple of kids with one packet of M&Ms to last them the week.

It's March 2021 and we've posted four paperbacks. The next game is to guess which one of these four will be returned without explanation despite the paperwork being correct. Software is for softies, this isn't CSI (but it is a crime scene...)

It wasn't just rejected, customs has applied invalid charges to this book and is sending messages to the customer. They want 50 euros. We get a couple of these a year, but only for our top customers.

A quick look at the figures... the EU customer base is falling. But I look down at my lukewarm Rees-Mogg mug, smiling beneficiently. If I just believe, I'll reach 1000 customers soon

Question. If you are exporting 2500 packages a year to the EU, is it still worth being British?

Take a look at becoming an Estonian e-Citizen (careful, it's so easy you might do it by accident)...

e-resident.gov.ee/become-an-e-re…

It's simple to offshore your e-commerce. Estonia has one of the most internet savvy governments in the world. I know someone who does all his business there. States compete for successful exporters, which must further impact UK growth.

The problem facing British growth isn't just competition from a Single Market designed to prosper the member states within it. It seems the British government is not capable of bringing prosperity to the UK.

Footnote: you can now send "duty unpaid" but the customer may literally be asked to hand the postie a cheque at the door to receive their parcel. Not a world-class customer experience. Or the parcel may bounce.

Brexit is one of the causes of our current emergency funding campaign.

Click the link to learn more and see if you can help us weather the storm:

henninghamfamilypress.com/crowdfunding

Ok, so people asking what kind of books we make.

Here's a handy introductory thread. Book purchases currently contribute to our fundraising target to save our press!

https://twitter.com/HenninghamPress/status/1678840119552245766?t=UrE_00Egwi64dscFxv77JA&s=19

@danopic12 @DavidHenningham There's plenty in the thread from my industry with the same costs as me.

@_NFANews @LouiseCulmer1 @AmandaPCraig @DavidHenningham Furthermore, every one of our peers globally has continued to have a balance of internal production and imports except us. Large population, geographic obstacles to trade and low industry. The worst place to try isolationism.