Export delays and cost hikes continue to hit trade with Europe

The trade is continuing to face lengthy delays exporting books to Europe following the end of the post-Brexit transition period, with Amazon understood to have made changes to its purchasing to mitigate the issue.

With an increase in customs clearing paperwork affecting both delivery times and costs, some publishers have been encouraged to print more in Europe to cut down on lead times to serve EU export markets.

Meanwhile a number of publishers have told The Bookseller EU business is being currently rerouted through Amazon.co.uk temporarily to expedite deliveries. Amazon has declined to comment on its commercial operations.

Profile m.d. Andrew Franklin reported particular issues in getting books to customers in Ireland. The longest time it had taken to get a lorry into Dublin for its exports is 18 days and it is now taking an average of eight days, he said, whereas before Brexit it was taking only one or two days.

Franklin said the border situation was "a nightmare" for freight forwarders, with lorries experiencing paperwork issues in front meaning those behind must "just sit there until they sort it out".

"That could be three or four hours, so if there are three lorries in front of you, half a mile down the road, that could be 12 hours," he said.

Getting books into mainland Europe is also problematic, he said, adding "massively" to costings and "hitting sales". As for receiving books printed in Europe, he said shipments were taking longer to get in owing to problems at ports: "Most print books come through Felixstowe, and Felixstowe is completely chockablock."

Simon Robson, director of global operations at Bloomsbury, expressed concern over increased costs. "Brexit is raising a number of different challenges in our supply chain and what is clear is that there is a huge amount of confusion and inconsistency in how taxes and duties are being interpreted and applied," he said. "We won’t know the full impact for a number of months but undoubtedly the extra costs on direct-to-consumer orders is an area of specific focus."

Lesley O’Mara, managing director at Michael O Mara, said: “Brexit has resulted in additional administrative work for our production department and has resulted in an increase to transport costs and longer journey times owing to the reluctance of hauliers wanting to come to the UK for fear of getting stuck on their return journey. There’s no other news yet on export sales but it’s early days."

Karen Sullivan, founder and publisher of Orenda, said her some of her authors were being hit with hefty import charges on copies of their books. "An EU author had to pay £20 to receive his author copies," she said. "That's never happened before." Franklin said trying to get author copies to Paris-based Simon Kuper, whose book The Happy Traitor recently published had proved impossible. "We just can’t get them to him," he said. "We’ve tried about three times. It's completely broken down. We’ve tried posting them, we’ve tried a courier."

For DK, freight coming into the UK from the EU has been "relatively smooth", but this has not been the case vice versa. Shaun Hodgkinson, chief operating officer at DK, said: "We have experienced some delays with freight going out to the EU, mainly owing to the additional paperwork. There has also been an increase in the time spent monitoring freight. We have had to pay a great deal more attention to this on a daily basis to ensure our deliveries are kept on track. There are price increases on freight in the market. We are continuing to work through it to mitigate them as best we can."

This said, he argued that the Brexit process had actually strengthened DK’s relationship with European suppliers. "During the planning process, we worked more closely with them, and as a result, we are stronger for it," he said.

Logistics provider Publiship told The Bookseller there are difficulties exporting cargo to the EU, particularly with part loads, as many truckers are no longer accepting cargo at the moment, and there are issues cropping up over who will pay VAT to get books through.

"I think most of the issues will settle down when people get used to the requirements and have permanent arrangements in place," said Dave Thompson, Publiship's group sales and development director. "This doesn’t mean the financial and bureaucratic burdens will go away - the additional friction from customs clearance and the related charges will still apply, and transport costs also look to remain higher for some time to come, but at least everyone will be aware of the process and it will run more smoothly."

He added: "With regards to the general freight market, things have settled down a bit, although costs remain at record levels."

Bridget Shine, c.e.o. of the Independent Publishers Guild (IPG), said most members had experienced manageable delays with books going in or out of the UK since the start of the year. However, she said the “real pinch point” had been direct sales to individual EU customers and some publishers had suspended their sales there.

She explained: “While these consignments tend to be small value on their own, collectively they can form a significant part of small publishers’ businesses, especially in specialist and niche areas of the market. We’ve heard reports of long delays on these books reaching customers, and of buyers having to pay locally to get books out customs, which is very frustrating for the UK publishers selling them in good faith.

“Not all publishers have intermediaries to handle things like customs declarations and other paperwork for them, and we know a lot of distribution, freight and courier partners are dealing with backlogs at the moment. Processing orders in-house and making customs declarations on deliveries via the Royal Mail is okay for small quantities of orders, but impractical for publishers receiving many orders a day. Faced with all the complexity and admin costs, it’s not surprising that some publishers have chosen to suspend sales into the EU for the time being.”

She added: “It’s exasperating for publishers selling direct, and it was caused in large part by the last-minute nature of the Brexit deal between the UK and the EU. Teething problems with customs were inevitable, but businesses were left with just a few days to digest the new requirements for exporting to Europe, and given little by way of support. The government has since provided some guidance, and the SME Brexit Support Fund announced last week is welcome, but it hasn’t yet done much to ease businesses’ frustrations on the ground, and the lack of informed advice has been very disappointing.

“We’re making the Department for International Trade aware of the issues and will be discussing them at our International Publishing Forum on 9th and 10th March. These issues may ease as new trading arrangements settle down, but it’s not enough to hope that problems will go away: small businesses need practical support to ease their sales into the EU now.”