Shipping and tax mainly. What I hope to put into readers' hands for about $15 ends up costing them $30-$40. Physical distribution still seems a mess for small publishers who are in that gap between full POD/Lulu type thing and working with a major brand.

For example, many distributors won't take on business with publishers with less than 5 or 10 titles. Mine has 3, so is considered a "vanity press". Coordinating POD internationally is a PITA. So I use a smallish UK POD (Great British Bookshop) of my current project, and hold a few dozen myself mainly for mailing out to reviewers and press. Also, lots of distributors still operate on "store and forward", which means holding litho-printed stock (runs of 500+). I just can't be doing with that in 2022!

I also recorded an audio [1] version, which has had precisely zero sales AFAICT, mainly because I have no idea how to break that market.

Any podcasters here wanna give it a listen? shoot me a message, cheers.

[1] https://digitalvegan.net

I (living in EU) brought some RPi hats from some UK online store. DHL asked me to to print/sign/scan several docs, complete multiple forms, etc, and make a separate VAT payment. The process took almost two weeks.

> > I can't sell paper outside the UK any more.

> What is this down to?

Probably producing locally and then exporting is prohibitively expensive.