Sally Jane Thompson's Blog, page 2

2015: Convention burnout, and doing things differently

I realized last year that I’d been tabling at conventions every year for over a decade. (Yay!) Then towards the end of last year, a combination of conventions-that-had-been-booked-in-the-spring and jobs or events that showed up later and I couldn’t say no to meant that I had a period of almost three months with a con, job, or event every single weekend (straight after being out of the country for a month).

To say I became burned out is an understatement, and I had no time to plan or prep for any of the cons I attended, having to simply pack what stock I had around, and then leave it in the suitcase afterwards for the next one. On the one hand, being forced to have a more casual approach meant I put less pressure on myself regarding earnings, and tried to focus on seeing people. And in between all that running around, I did get to spend some time with comickers I adore, and had some really great conversations.

But after doing cons the same way for so long, I think it’s high time for a change of pace. I still want to do a few cons this year – I would miss you all too much if not! So:

For 2015, I will not book a table at any cons.

I’m saying that out loud here because soon tables will start to become available, and everyone will be excitedly talking about it, and I will feel tempted. If I start tweeting that I’m considering it, feel free to give me a metaphorical cuff about the ear ^_~

For any event organizers reading this: I would be very into coming and doing something else at a few events this year.

Although the most likely scenario is that I will come and perch at my publisher’s table for a little while, if anyone would like to chat about any of the following (or anything I’ve not thought of!), feel free to drop me a line (sally [at] sallyjanethompson.co.uk )

-One of the events that kept me hopping about in the fall was Museomix UK, where I was lucky enough to be artist in residence, and record the whole event live, creating a document that told the event’s story. I would like to do more of this.

-I am totally into doing live art! The canvas (maybe 3′ x 2′ ?) below was done over a few hours for the opening of the Blood and Roses show at Orbital Comics last year.

-More traditionally, happy to chat about chipping in on panels. Topics I could particularly contribute to include freelance/working topics (I run a sporadic series of posts called Freelance Friday on my blog), and process stuff, which I love (and know from a couple of sides, working both with other writers and as a writer-artist).

So yes, I will be around, perhaps even as a visitor (which I don’t think I’ve ever done at a comic con)! See you all around!

Happy New Year

 

And late Christmas wishes too – I hope everyone had a bit of a breather, and some time to relax, recuperate and reflect. I won’t make this a full new year’s post, as I’m still reflecting really, but I am looking forward to the year ahead, and very grateful for the blessings of the last year, including the wonderful chance to do a CUNE residency in Estonia, and getting the chance to work with the absolutely fantastic Phoenix crew.

Planning to make a few changes for this year, mostly to cons as I’m feeling a bit burnt out – but will be around, making work and enthusing about comics! More thoughts soon

Freelance (not quite) Friday – VATMOSS updates

As we approach EU-VAT-Reg-Day (Jan 1), here are some updates. A lot has happened since my first VATMOSS post (which you can read here if you need a bit of background on what this is about. If you sell digital content online, this concerns you).

I will be getting things off Gumroad, etc, before New Years, and know what a lot of fantastic individual creators,  small presses, and small businesses of different sorts will be calling curtain, and that is a horrible, backwards thing.

I’ll update a few categories here: Campaign updates; International; Third-Party Platforms; and Emailing Files.

Campaign updates:

The EU VAT Action campaign has been incredibly active, and I’m hugely grateful for the work so many people have put in.

They have a great update here. The general gist is: UK higher-ups have heard and now understand the issues, and meetings and behind-closed-doors campaigning is happening. However, a) this’ll take some time, so Jan 1 stands as implementation date, and b) being an EU-wise legislation, there are limits to what UK reps can do.

To do: Keep sending letters to your MEPs – Enterprise Nation has a great template and link to look up your MEP, especially if you’re in another EU country, as it seems likely nothing will happen if it appears that UK is the only country concerned, and it also needs to be clear this is an ongoing concern and not something we’ve forgotten about already. Also, please go sign the EU petition ASAP if you haven’t yet!

If you are a business who is having to make the horrible decision to close your doors, please submit a case study to EU VAT Action

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International:

You may notice in my initial post that I’m only addressing UK and EU sellers – at the time I hadn’t made the connection that, since the new regs are about stopping large corporations avoiding VAT on sales to the EU by incorporating in low-tax locations (eg. Luxembourg) – by making the tax payable to the country of purchase – that means sales made from anywhere to an EU country owe VAT to the country of purchase, plus have the info retention burdens, etc. That would make, say, a Canadian comicker selling comics on Gumroad who happens to have a few purchases from the EU liable for everything described here. (I’m just talking regulations here – I have no idea how this would be enforced – but as business owners, we’re all aiming to be on the right side of the law!)

There is currently a US petition online, asking the White House to negotiate with the European Commission on this, so that’s a start. Other than that, it may be absolutely-awful-but-wise to consider suspending sales for a while while. (And the third-party platforms section below may be relevant.)

Wherever you are, it would be worth contacting your tax office to find out what their response is; EU countries are setting up ‘VAT Mini One Stop Shops’ so that businesses don’t need to register in every EU state they sell in – it’s still an unworkable admin load for a huge number of microbusinesses, but will at least allow larger UK businesses to keep trading. Your country may be setting up something similar, so it would be good to know what their response is. If you do find any responses/documentation, please pass it around online for other creatives based in your neck of the woods.

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Third-Party Platforms:

Selling from one’s own site results in much more workable profit margins and greater control and audience connection. But when this all came to light, and it began to seem that would no longer be an option for most of us, one of the biggest questions was third-party platforms, and whether they would offer us a way to keep selling without registering for VAT. A good third-party platform could allow many of us to continue as-is, without a huge change.

In multiple Q & A’s, HMRC representatives indicated that third-party platforms hosting sales and downloads would be liable to look after VAT, which seemed hopeful. But due to some contradictory responses on various details early on, and not knowing whether they considered that liability as something that could be transferred via (common) T&C’s stating all tax is the seller’s responsibility, it seemed best to be cautious. That seems to have been the correct approach, as EU VAT Action’s recent update states that “At the moment we cannot find any mention in the 94 page EU explanatory notes that says the 3rd party platform is liable.”

So it’s all down to the platforms themselves, and their updates will probably come in drips and drabs as they decide what to do. Here are a few that you may want to look into (*bearing in mind I’m not endorsing any of these, and haven’t tried the latter 2. Read the T&Cs well, as always):

Etsy: Being such a large platform, and having recently added digital download sales, I was hoping Etsy might be one of the platforms to step up to the plate here, but – having released they’re statement - they’re leaving tax as seller’s responsibility, and that’s totally understandable. What’s worth mentioning is they say they’re looking into allowing sellers to limit the places their digital content will ‘ship’ to. This may need some legal investigation on whether that constitutes any form of discrimination, but if most of your readers are, say, in the US, it seems something worth looking into.

Paddle.com : I’d not heard of them before, but they’ve stated they’re acting as a reseller, passing on a percentage to you and taking on the VAT themselves, so seem very worth looking into. Per-transaction fees rather than subscription.

Fifthweek : a new platform who contacted me on LinkedIn – and who say they’ll be tackling VAT, which makes them worth looking into. They’re a subscription platform though – so not necessarily the right fit if you’re looking to sell a pdf of a finished comic, but possibly good for people whose work is in the Patreon/webcomics/ongoing mold.

More as we find them – let me know if you know of a platform who’s released a statement on this.

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Emailing files: This is a loophole that’s been going around because the regulations refer to automated downloads with minimal human intervention. Thus, it was said in Q&A’s, if someone purchases a file and then you manually email it to them, this is outside of the new regs.

Aside from this perhaps not feeling like the most professional way to deliver files to customers, I had disregarded it due to Andrew Webb, Senior VAT Policy Manager at HMRC, comments as recorded by knitwear designer Ysolda, in a talk she attended, as he “very clearly clarified that this is not the case, any file sent via the internet that a customer has paid for constitutes  a digital service including files that are manually emailed“.

However, in the updated official guidelines on the gov.uk site, it addresses this in the ‘Defining Electronically Supplied’ section. Basically, a ‘Pdf document manually emailed by seller’ does not count as ‘electronically supplied’ and is not included under the new regs….but, a “Link to online content or download sent by manual email” is and does. So you can manually email files, but you’ll be limited to files that are small enough to attach to the email, which won’t work for most comickers.

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That’s all for today – as mentioned, if you have any updates on relevent platforms releasing statements, let me know! In the meantime, follow EU VAT Action for updates.

VATMOSS Updates and Twitter storm – UK and EU creators, please read!

I’d been hoping to do a more in-depth followup of VATMOSS updates, but time has not allowed (if you’re not sure what VATMOSS is, see my last post, w/ info and links - if you sell digital content online – comics, fonts, knitting patterns, etc – and are in the UK/EU, this affects you).

However,  a quick post is needed anyway, for this important update:

The excellent EU VAT ACTION site are organizing a Twitter Storm for tomorrow, at 10AM GMT. Their site has fantastic and specific information on what to tweet, to who, and with what hashtags, to make the greatest impact.

Building on the petitioning and contact with HMRC in the UK, the aim of this is to push the European Commission to suspend the new regulations, before they break up over Christmas and the regulations roll in Jan 1.

Further updates as I’m able and as news becomes available, but keep an eye on the EU VAT ACTION site as well. While you’re there, please please also sign the EU-targeted petition as well.

Freelance Friday – VATMOSS

Okay! So big, important post today, targeted at UK freelancers who sell digital products, about new VAT regulations that apply to you (and other EU freelancers: this discussion regards EU-wide legislation, so any changes or thresholds are agreed in Brussels will, as far as I can tell, affect you too – you may wish to skip to Updates/What to Do Section). There’s already been a lot of incredibly valuable information, thoughts and action posted around HMRC’s new VAT changes, but I thought I’d try and collect as much good info as I could in one place, in case it’s helpful.

*Disclaimer – as always, I remind you that I am not a lawyer, and nothing I say should be considered legal advice. I’ll leave that to your lawyer and HMRC.

This is all to the best of my understanding – if you spot any errors or old information in here, please do let me know!

This’ll be quite a long post, with a bit on what VATMOSS is, what our options are, selling through third parties, Kickstarter/Patreon and donations, updates/things to do, and useful links.

What it is:

HMRC has introduced new regulations, in place from January, which are apparently designed to prevent large corporations from avoiding tax, and avoid small companies having to pay separate VAT in each EU country it sells to. What has made me absolutely livid is the apparent lack of understanding of who sells products online. Unlike regular freelance regulations, there is no threshold of earnings under which you do not have to be registered for VAT – sell a single knitting pattern pdf  to someone in the EU, and you are expected to register for VAT and meet the new admin requirements on digital sales to EU nations.

This will require you to:

-Register for VAT

-Account for VAT in your prices on digital products, either upping your prices or taking the hit yourself.

-File a return four times a year via the VAT Mini One Stop Shop (VATMOSS)

-Retain two pieces of non-contradictory data proving the location of each buyer for 10 years (!) (which also means meeting data protection regulations)

-Split your business into two, one for EU sales and one for everything else, unless you want your now VAT-registered business to have to charge VAT to your clients for your commissioned freelance work as well, increasing your prices/fees.

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What our options are:

-Do all of the above to keep selling as-is. For most of us, this is simply not an option. If you’re just selling a few comics online, what you’re making is in many, many cases not going to be enough to justify, or even cover, the time all of the above would take. It makes me incredibly upset to think of all of the businesses that start with someone just selling a few patterns/assets/books, trying something out, in the spare hours outside of their full time job – of the few of those that flourish and go on to become careers – and how some of those successful businesses may now never happen because the starting hurdle is too inaccessible to someone who just has a few hours and wants to test the waters. Even existing microbusinesses with some experience may not be able to meet the new requirements. I’ve already heard of online microbusinesses making the horrible decision to shut down.

-Register for VAT in every EU state you sell to. Again, not an option.

-Sell through a third-party platform who will be responsible for meeting these regulations themselves. This is clearly the most obvious option, but given that many platforms have terms and conditions along the lines of “the transaction is between the seller and buyer”, I wasn’t hopeful about any being willing to take on the burden. However, there’s been news on that front, and it seems this is the way to go for now. More on that in next section.

-Offer free content with donation button, or similar approach, on your site.

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Selling through third party platforms:

There seems to be some cause for cautious optimism here for sole traders, if not for platforms. This immediately stood out as the most viable option for us to continue to sell our content, if we could find a reliable platform that was willing to take on the burden. In a flow chart produced by HMRC (as used here in a Digital Arts article) to clarify who needed to register, one of the questions is “do you only sell your e-services through a third party platform or marketplace (for example not through your own website)”, where the “Yes” branch takes you to “The rule changes don’t apply to you”. However, I was leery that the terms of many platforms wouldn’t allow them to simply state all VAT and other tax is the responsibility of the seller, leaving us with large companies like Amazon as the only option – an option many may object to.

However, in a twitter Q&A that HMRC held this week, this is addressed:

“C1  What constitutes a marketplace? #VATMOSS

A simple definition is that if a marketplace is responsible for authorising/allowing the download it is responsible. #VATMOSS

C3  Can you clarify the platform tip? Are *ALL* platforms including @Etsy @paypaluk @folksy responsible without exception? #VATMOSS

They are responsible if they authorise the download or payment process or set T&Cs. #VATMOSS

C5  If microbusinesses use PayPal buttons on their site for digital products, can we assume #VATMOSS will be covered by PayPalUK?

No. PayPal is not an e-marketplace. It is a 3rd party payment provider. #VATMOSS

C6  So which platforms will take responsibility and which will leave us to do it ourselves?

We are referring to platforms where order is placed, payments are processed and delivery made through its website. #VATMOSS

C7  Many crafts sell digital services direct through platforms that can rebut the criteria, and won’t deal with #VATMOSS for us.

We have not received a credible rebuttal to date, as all these platforms are responsible for authorising the download. #VATMOSS”

This is not good news for the platforms themselves, and I sincerely feel for them, and worry for the smaller ones. For freelancers however, this seems to state that although we cannot sell through our own sites without being VAT registered, we can still sell through third-party platforms without needing to be. 

However! I definitely advocate caution until we can get some official clarification on this. This post is a collating of a twitter conversation, posted on a third-party site. So, despite being from the tax horse’s mouth, I would still far prefer this in writing on the gov.uk site or similar, so I have documents to back myself up and avoid ‘unlimited fines’. There is some room for misunderstanding after all – for example, the very end of the twitter Q&A features an annex on what constitutes enough “human intervention”. It seems very clearly to say to me that if you are manually emailing files to buyers, you’re in the clear – yet knitwear designer Ysolda writes of attending a talk where Andrew Webb, Senior VAT Policy Manager at HMRC “very clearly clarified that this is not the case, any file sent via the internet that a customer has paid for constitutes  a digital service including files that are manually emailed“.

Ysolda’s article goes on to discuss third party sites, and Webb’s response:

“Webb stated repeatedly that “the reality is that the platforms are caught” and that: “There’s a presumption because the platforms are agents acting in their own name, it would be very difficult for a platform to say “nothing to do with me” even if they aren’t handling payments. The majority of the time the consumer assumes they’re buying from the platform.”

…

This is not as clear-cut as it ought to be, and they don’t seem to have considered that some such platforms are run by businesses that are themselves very small.

…

An important point that was made for those of you who are selling on a marketplace / platform that has stated that they will not be dealing with EU VAT: if the platform tells you that they are not liable then you should leave that question to the EU and assume that handling VAT is your responsibility.“

So while HMRC seems to have given the go-ahead to continue using third-party sites without being VAT registered, I’d feel a lot better having it in clear text on a government site/document, or alternately, in writing from the platform itself that they are taking responsibility for VAT.

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Kickstarter/Patreon/donations:

Crowdfunding will be affected by this too, and the guidance is more vague. Kickstarter/Indiegogo etc are likely to be more affected by Patreon, a they’re generally more clearly transactional than Patreon – “x amount of money for x item” is clearly a transaction even if the word donation is thrown around.

Some Patreon campaigns are also fairly transactional, and I have a feeling this will all come down to wording on what is and isn’t okay. From the abovementioned twitter Q&A:

“C9  How will #VATMOSS interact with things like Patreon and Kickstarter pledges, where people are rewarded for donations?

It depends on the nature of the reward #VATMOSS”

There are also options here to potentially offer free downloadable content with a donation button, but that’s probably worth a big discussion on its own, in terms of the results of that, page setups, user behaviours, etc. If I get time, a separate blogpost on donation models and crowdfunding related to this might be a good idea!

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Updates/things to do:

-Ask HMRC for official documentation specifically confirming their twitter Q&A answers that selling via any third party site that serves and authorises the downloads is exempt. Their email for VATMOSS is vat2015.contact@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk

-Enterprise Nation have been very active here, and managed to meet with senior decision makers earlier this week to make micro-businesses’ concerns known. It seems to have been a positive meeting, but it remains to be seen if further discussions in Brussels will lead to any positive results. See their writeup of the meeting here.

-Novelist Juliet E. McKenna has also been very active, and has set up a Digital Microbusiness Action Group. She also attended the above meeting, and has posted about it here.

-There is a petition to uphold the VAT threshold here – this seems to be an EU decision, but things like this will hopefully encourage and help our representatives to push harder on this in EU discussions.

-Write to your MP and your MEP. Especially your MEP, as it seems like any changes will need to be agreed in Brussels. Enterprise Nation have a template you can modify to send on, with a link to find your MEP, meaning it will only take you a few minutes, so please do!!

-If you’re not in the UK but are in another EU country, please please contact your own MEP, as if other countries also come to the table with concerns from their freelancers, we all have a better chance of results!

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Useful links:

-Official HMRC guidance (and, though again not an official document, that twitter Q&A)

-Knitwear designer Ysolda’s excellent writeup

-Digital Arts article

-Juliet E. McKenna’s Digital Microbusiness ActionGroup and Twitter feed, , which is full of useful updates

-Down the Tubes has a great collection of links here

-Web developer Rachel Andrew has a post here, and has started an EU VAT GitHub site to keep track of updates and links

-Enterprise Nation’s post

Feel free to send any updates on that you feel I should add – otherwise follow the discussion via these links, and I’ll post any major updates I find.

 

 

 

 

 

Writing update (fake NaNo progress)

A non-Museomix post, gasp!

Just a quick solidarity update for everyone I know who’s doing NaNoWriMo, or any variation of their own. I’ve never done the official version, and am not this year (partly time, and partly because I always have multiple stories on-the-go, so starting a new one is probably not the best idea).

But I did want to play along, so I gave myself a simple write-something-every-day on particular project challenge. Anything, even just one line.

Started pretty well – I’d been typing til the start of the month, but with hours of travel for a workshop on the 1st, I took a notebook with me and got a couple of pages in on the train. Usually it was more than a line, but a couple of days that’s all it was.

Then this last weekend was Museomix. And I managed the first day, remembering just before I fell asleep and scrawling a couple of lines in bed. They were nice lines too, lines that kind of wandered off in their own direction because I was half asleep already. Then I missed the next two days.

Not beating myself up – Those were 15 hr days, and I’ve been back on track since, and will hopefully keep it up during Thought Bubble this weekend (….). But what I did notice was how easy it was to forget the second day, after I’d forgotten once.

That tiny little bit of input is proving such a help in just keeping the door open on the room it occupies in my head – so I can wander in when I have a spare minute, rather than feeling it’s not worth it unless I have a big enough block of time to get my brain back in the right place and figure out where I am in it. Even though doing that’s probably a bit easier for people w/ my process, where I have an outline, so can just check what’s happening at that point in the story, the maintained connection still helps.

This is a weird project to do, as it’ll be a sort of prose/illustration/comic mixy…thing. So this current draft is messy, jumping from passages of prose to notes on pg layouts and images as they pop up. It also keeps changing tenses because, despite my previously-avowed dislike of present-tense, passages keep falling into it and, with the spacious layouts and segues into panels, I’m starting to like it. So yes, messy, and I’m dying to get through it so I can knock it into a neater shape, and get some proof-of-concept pages with visuals done. And this is helping, this little bit, every day.

How about you?

Museomix UK 2014 part 4

Carrying on…

Click through for more, including the first few Team concept illustrations – managed to get one done for each team’s idea!

More soon!

Museomix UK 2014 part 3

Onwards!

Evening team presentations covered here – short and full of ideas and info, so this batch are a bit text-heavy! We’ll get into Day 2 tomorrow Click through for more!

Museomix UK 2014 part 2

Continuing day one!

Click through for more!

Museomix UK 2014

Over the course of this weekend, I’m acting as artist-in-residence for the UK iteration of Museomix. I’m going to send you to the sites rather than write anything up here right now as it’s coming up on midnight and I’ll be doing this all again the morning, but I wanted to make a start on posting the sketch journal I’m working on recording it! Much more to come, this batch barely gets us past setup into the first day – will make it available in full in one form or another after the event!

You can follow along on twitter under #MMUK14 !