Recently the European Union decided that the way VAT was applied to a sale would change. Instead of it being the VAT of whatever country the seller is in, from January 1st it will be the VAT of whatever country the buyer is in. At the moment Amazon’s UK server is hosted in luxumbourg where VAT is only 5% so as of the start of next year, all my UK buyers will find the prices adjusted up by 15% to compensate for the increase in VAT.
As far as I can tell from the email Amazon have sent this will be automatic and will apply to a lot of books (not just mine), although I don’t know if it will apply to the big 5 publishers or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it does. Not even they can take a 15% hit to the profit margin, so if you plan to buy any ebooks in the next little while, do get them before the end of the year or you may find the books you want to be even more expensive after.
Print books will remain VAT free, as they’ve always been.