LLBR has moved – to read this great article, go to our new site – In-News: Why Snail Mail Costs More Than Escargot
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: amazon shipping, barnes and noble shipping, book margins, book profit, book shipping, cost of shipping, lulu shipping, lulu.com, media mail, shipping books, UPS fuel surcharge, UPS shipping
Nice article on the “cost” of shipping. You are absolutely correct, if I go to the Post Office to ship one book media mail – cost to me=$2.58. Cost of shipping from Lulu=$5.90. So, in reality, the hidden service charge is $3.32. Multiply that by the number of books shipped per day.
By the way, that is not even factoring in that while they ship their paperbacks in great boxes, shrink wrapped to a box sized cardboard sheet to keep it from shifting during shipping, the hard bounds are packaged in a simple, size of the book, thin piece of cardboard that falls flat as soon as you slit the tape.
Lulu”s international shipping is worse; it cost $10 to ship one of my books to Canada. The shipping was more expensive than the cost of the book, and this is their “economy” shipping.