A SCOTTISH publisher has taken aim at Brexit after seeing his business hit with spiralling costs and dwindling sales.
Allan Cameron, pictured, has been running Glasgow-based Vagabond Voices since 2008, which largely focuses on translating European novels into English. The 69-year-old translator and author decided to start up the company to initially publish his own books, which include The Berlusconi Bonus and The Golden Menagerie, both published by Luath Press.
Cameron, who specialises in Italian translations, told The Sunday National that Brexit had seen delivery times double in cases while his printing costs have increased – both issues he pins on the UK’s exit of the European Union.
He said: “As a business, I think that we’ve been hit quite hard.
“Brexit has inevitably increased costs and the pound went down too, so that means printing costs in Poland have gone up.
“Brexit means now we’ve got costs for customs clearance which obviously didn’t exist beforehand.”
While the rising costs from Boris Johnson’s Brexit will see either costs passed onto the consumer or absorbed by his small profit-margin business, he said it is also about reliability and stability.
“It’s not just a financial thing,” he said. “It’s also a logistical issue.
“Before Brexit you could reliably get your books in two or three weeks.
“Now, I mean, I had one situation where I think it took me about six weeks for the books to turn up.”
Cameron said a rise in delivery costs has been one of the biggest issues for his firm.
He said he expects those prices to continue going up.
As well as a “substantial” increase in costs, he’s also seeing his EU sales plummet – a key market for a Scottish publisher translating different European language books into English.
Cameron says it is increasingly common for European book stores to offer an English language section.
Despite the impact he said Brexit has had on his business, the Government has offered him “absolutely no support”. Cameron joins a chorus of Scottish firms that have called for action after suffering rising costs and delivery delays associated with Brexit-induced red tape.
The Sunday National has spoken to several Scottish businesses who all report increased red tape, long waits for deliveries and uncertainty for their future.
Mixed with the impact of Covid, Cameron fears the effects of increasing customs issues, rising costs and lower sales will have on his firm.
He said: “The thing is Brexit is not just reducing sales.
“Principally, what it’s doing is increasing costs, and therefore cutting down on margins, which are always very tight in the book industry anyway so a small movement could take away any profit on some of the sales.”
Cameron said he hoped he would see Scotland back in the Single Market and Customs Union for his business but hoped for a full-scale return one day.
He said Brexit was one of the main issues that led him to support independence in Scotland, adding that his ties to Europe go beyond economic ones.
Speaking to The Sunday National from Italy, he said: “For me, Brexit was not just a business problem, but also an emotional one. It was cutting me off from something that was very important to me. That was being a European citizen.”
If your business has been affected by Brexit, contact Craig.Meighan@newsquest.co.uk or head to www.thenational.scot/my/ccn/assignment/csaxV6fx/
