Quote:
Originally Posted by Jukka Juutinen
Neil, I am afraid that using Mombeeck's success with his books is very poor. Firstly, his marketing is utterly poor in all aspects. Second, had he made the decision to do those books ONLY in English, they would have sold much much more. I can understand him doing books in his native language, but not in German. The number of such German buyers who read only German and simultaneously are interested in the topic has been probably very mininal for many years now.
A part of the latter includes reasonable shipping costs. For example, a market-wise seller sends parcels to Europe (esp. EU) from Germany with its very fair postage costs instead of robbers like Belgium or Holland.
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I would both agree and disagree with your first statement. According to my US distributer at RZM, the market for German-language only books is decreasing because a lot of buyers are older gentlemen who are dying off. However, my contact at Berlin Zinnfiguren tells me that bi-lingual books would be a good idea....so it's academic really. Personally I think that producing bi-lingual books is a waste of my time and money, and that English language books are what I should focus on.
As for your comment about postage costs and shipping stuff from Germany, you forget that if I, as a UK seller, did that, I would in effect have to register my business in Germany. Either that, or get a third party in Germany to buy and stock my products, then fulfil any orders I take in the UK for EU based customers. I'm afraid there really is no way I can think of to get around the VAT rules, other than move to a European country myself and, as mentioned, register my business there. Which is much easier said than done.