(NL/EU) Does anyone have experience setting up an Indie Publisher? (NL/EU)

[Ban]

As the title says. I am thinking about creating a private press/indie publishing house to publish my own books under. The reason why I am looking into this is to lend an air of professionalism to my work, whilst retaining full control over the writing, editing, cover creating, etcetera of my works. My plan is to distribute commercial editions of my works through print on demand websites such as amazon, bol.com or barnes and noble (should I figure out how to do that), thus cutting publishing costs. Special editions could be published through the publishing house.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience setting up such a company here in the Netherlands/Benelux or the wider EU. As far as I know there is a lot of collaboration in this regard between the Benelux countries, so if any Belgians or Luxembourgians may be present I'd be interested in hearing from you as well. If anyone from outside of the EU happens to know of Europeans who have done this and possess knowledge of the process, feel free to comment as well.

 

[pmmg]

Only US for me.

If any of it is similar...You could just wing it and say you have one on the forms.

To make it official, you would need to become an LLC, or Sole Proprietorship. Start a bank account, and report your taxes. If you start a company, there will possibly be some hoops to jump through, like annual reporting. You would not want to mix company money with personal, that would soon become hard to sort out.

 

[Ban]

That much I know. The problem I've found is that most information online pertains to the US. I would assume in the Netherlands we need to register with the chamber of commerce, but I have not found clear information of what to do precisely and if there are any particular laws applicable to the Netherlands and/or the EU. The articles I did find repeated the ever useful advise of "Step 1. Find a good name!" etcetera.

 

[pmmg]

I suppose you could call the chamber of commerce and ask them.

 

[Ban]

That would be a good option yes, though I would like to see if anyone here happens to have experience in regards to setting up an EU publishing house.

 

[Mad Swede]

I know several authors who have done that here in Sweden. It seems to be fairly straightforward, they just register a company and then arrange contracts with suitable editors and printers. Then all they need is somewhere to store the books, and a few media contacts so that they can arrange book reviews. After that they just sign a contract with one of the book distribution services so that the books can be sold in bookshops as well as online and start to market the books.

 

[Ban]

I know several authors who have done that here in Sweden. It seems to be fairly straightforward, they just register a company and then arrange contracts with suitable editors and printers. Then all they need is somewhere to store the books, and a few media contacts so that they can arrange book reviews. After that they just sign a contract with one of the book distribution services so that the books can be sold in bookshops as well as online and start to market the books.

I'm not planning something quite as advanced, but that's good to hear. For what I'm planning in the short to medium run I reckon I only need to officially register the company and reach out to indie book reviewers. Using print on demand I have no need for contracting printers or arranging storage until it's time to create special editions.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Being dutch and having indie-published 5 novels so far I can share my perspective. Though note that it's just my opinion, and I'm not a lawyer.

2 things that are good to know up front:
- The Netherlands has tax treaties with most countries around the world, most notably with the US. Which means if you fill in the right forms, you don't get taxed in the US for any sales on online platforms but in the Netherlands
- Royalties have a 0% tax rate in the Netherlands.

You don't need an official company to be an indie publisher. I haven't registered anything. And no one has complained.

You will need a few acounts:
- Amazon KDP (Self Publishing | Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing ) You use this to publish on Amazon.
- Draft2Digital (Draft2Digital ) You use this to publish everywhere but on Amazon (including Bol.com by the way).
- Inloggen You use this to purchase ISBN's. If you want your own ISBN's (you don't need to, but if you want to appear as a legit, real publisher, then it's a necessary step). You can get 1 or 10. If you email them then you can also get 100 in one go. It gets cheaper the more you get. But it really depends on how many novels you expect to publish. You'll need one for each format. Which adds up fast if you publish ebook, paperback and hardcover....

Make up a publishing company name.

You create all accounts as you, a normal person. Fill out the different forms and information. When you go to publish a novel, then you give in both your pen name and your publisher name. Do this on Amazon, D2D, and mijnISBN.

Congratulations, you are now a publisher.

Depending on how much you sell, you can take it further. If you're like most authors, you'll make less than €500 a year. In that case, don't bother. It will only add overhead both in administration and costs. If you are starting to make more money, you can either register as a ZZP-er at the chamber of commerce, or create an actual company. Note that in both cases, you start running into requirements in terms of number of hours you need to put in, salary you should pay yourself, administration you keep and so on. As said, don't bother unless you actually make money.

You can just use your own bankaccount for transactions, though it's worth also having a Paypal acount, since it makes payments cheaper and easier.

 

[Finchbearer]

No knowledge to share here…but it sounds like a really interesting plan! That appeals to me, to do it all ‘in house’, if only there were no physical books printed then digital work could be produced and put out into the world at very little cost. Building a fan base is much harder…

 

[Ban]

Being dutch and having indie-published 5 novels so far I can share my perspective. Though note that it's just my opinion, and I'm not a lawyer.

2 things that are good to know up front:
- The Netherlands has tax treaties with most countries around the world, most notably with the US. Which means if you fill in the right forms, you don't get taxed in the US for any sales on online platforms but in the Netherlands
- Royalties have a 0% tax rate in the Netherlands.

You don't need an official company to be an indie publisher. I haven't registered anything. And no one has complained.

You will need a few acounts:
- Amazon KDP (Self Publishing | Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing ) You use this to publish on Amazon.
- Draft2Digital (Draft2Digital ) You use this to publish everywhere but on Amazon (including Bol.com by the way).
- Inloggen You use this to purchase ISBN's. If you want your own ISBN's (you don't need to, but if you want to appear as a legit, real publisher, then it's a necessary step). You can get 1 or 10. If you email them then you can also get 100 in one go. It gets cheaper the more you get. But it really depends on how many novels you expect to publish. You'll need one for each format. Which adds up fast if you publish ebook, paperback and hardcover....

Make up a publishing company name.

You create all accounts as you, a normal person. Fill out the different forms and information. When you go to publish a novel, then you give in both your pen name and your publisher name. Do this on Amazon, D2D, and mijnISBN.

Congratulations, you are now a publisher.

Depending on how much you sell, you can take it further. If you're like most authors, you'll make less than €500 a year. In that case, don't bother. It will only add overhead both in administration and costs. If you are starting to make more money, you can either register as a ZZP-er at the chamber of commerce, or create an actual company. Note that in both cases, you start running into requirements in terms of number of hours you need to put in, salary you should pay yourself, administration you keep and so on. As said, don't bother unless you actually make money.

You can just use your own bankaccount for transactions, though it's worth also having a Paypal acount, since it makes payments cheaper and easier.

This was my original plan and one that I have read before, which I may end up going for after all. Financially and in regards to administration it would be far simpler (and therefore perhaps smarter) than going through the hassle of setting up a true company, but I have one main concern with it, which is in regards to owning the company name. Do you happen to know if your way of approaching this would still legally give me the rights to the publishing company's name? I worry that if I don't register the publisher with the Chamber of Commerce I might have troubles further down the road if things do happen to go well enough to expand into a true private press (i.e. printing, storing, etcetera the own works in house so to speak). I wouldn't want to publish my works under a name which I might not legally own further down the road.

 

[pmmg]

If you want the name to be yours and no one elses, you’ll need to buy the domain name, register the business name, and trademark it.

In the us. Its possible to be registered in a state, but not nationally.

 

[Ban]

A quick search online tells me that if I do decide to register the trade name with the chamber of commerce I must also register the type of business I am running, plus the additional steps of setting up a business, which I assume also means I will have to go through the hassle of owning a separate bank account, taking care of the associated administration, etcetera. That's a shame. Perhaps I'd be better off publishing under my own name without a publishing house and republishing my books later on under my own company if things happen to go well.

 

[pmmg]

Thats sounds true to me.

 

[Ban]

Ah well. There are other ways to add legitimacy when the time comes to publish. I'll just set up a website and reach out to Indie reviewers, if I can find those folks. There ought to be more of them on this website haha.

 

[pmmg]

Yeah. It does not seem they let you dip your toes in first. Might be an education in it, but the cost benefit is hard to justify to sell 10 books.

 

[pmmg]

First stop should be to see if the domain name you want exists. That's kind of like saying to the world...I own this. Registering is like saying, no, I really own this. And trademark is like...Fuck you! I own this

Then you gotta worry about crossing state and international boundaries.

 

[Ban]

Guess I now need to figure out how to register domain names.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I indeed don't own the name of my publishing company. You need to register the trademark to actually do that. Keep in mind that a trademark registration is actually a limited thing. I could register Prince of Spires as my company name, but it would only apply to book publishing companies. You could still open a cafe named Prince of Spires. Or an IT company. Or anything else as long as it doesn't publish stuff. Which means that there is limited chance of someone actually claiming the name so I can't use it anymore.

The exception here is ifyou pick either something generic or something used by big corporations. Don't start Apple publishing, or Teams publishing.

As for legitimacy, it actually matters surprisingly little. How many publishers do you know? And can you actually name the publishers of all your favorite authors? I doubt many people either look at them or care about them. It's still nice to have. And I can tell by looking at an amazon page if a book is self-published when there is no publisher listed. But I'm the exception there.

 

[pmmg]

You are mixing trademark and company name a little there.

If one was to open Prince of Spires Cafe, they would likely be safe from being confused as Prince of Spires Publishing, but if you trademarked the logo and they used it, they could get zapped.