Publishing: And The Bad News Is…

I thought everything was going so well and, to a certain extent it was and is. My publishing plans are still on target, nothing has changed there; we have new titles in preparation for this year; the accounts for 2013 have been cleared and approved. But every silver lining has a cloud, and my tax accountant told me exactly what this dark cloud speeding over the horizon is. I have to register my company in Germany too. That is, not a complete registration, but a partial registration as the main office is here and I need to be on the German Business Register. The tax authorities expect it and I cannot avoid it.

What does that mean? It means going to a Notary and having an official application written, sent off to a court and approved, and then receiving an official number as a registered business. Despite the fact that we are registered officially in London. It’s much the same as the requirement, since the office is in Germany, to be a member of the Industrie und Handelskammer, which is a sort of official association written into the laws of the land every business has to belong to.

What else does that mean? Aside from having to pay my accountant, which was a given anyway, I have to pay a Notary and the court for my registration. Costs that I had thought we would not have, being registered in England. We do, however, pay our taxes here in Germany and, of course, operate from a German address. That’s what makes the difference.

The cost of registration came as something of a shock to me. It’s not just a case of filling out a form and sending it off, it must be done by a Notary and it must have all the stamps and seals of an officially approved person on it.

So I am back at that stage I didn’t want to see again: having to see whether I can raise the necessary funds to make me legal here, even though I had thought we’d covered all that.

Crowdfunding has not been a massive success for me in the past, and I have few expectations this time. I can probably raise the bulk of the finances myself – I have until August at the latest, ready for the September deadline for my 2014 accounts – but the chances of my succeeding alone are small. We’ve already looked through all the possibilities, counted our pennies, checked out the little pink piggy bank gathering dust in the corner. It doesn’t look good. The money we’ve made with the publishing business so far needs to be reinvested in the business, otherwise I can’t pay my authors or buy new materials.

Perhaps it will work out this time. Perhaps I will have to crawl into the bank manager’s office and beg. Who knows. But I want to keep this small press going, and it has a good future as far as I am concerned, so we’re back with crowdfunding.

Here’s hoping…

Love & Kisses, Viki.

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