Where writers (and others) sell books -- and more ...

Our Basic Shipping Rates Policies:

AuthorSales.Com passes through 100% of shipping charges to its clients. If you charge your customer $5.32 for shipping, we'll pass all $5.32 on to you. We believe that shipping should be revenue-neutral, and our default rates are based on that idea. However, we've set our charges to  your customer to be somewhat higher than the actual shipping charges you'll have to pay. This allows you to compensate yourself for the cost of shipping materials (and for your time in fulfilling the order), to give yourself a slight margin for error -- and also to make it easier to absorb the cost for the occasional shipment that happens to cost you more than it should. If you turn a 20 cent profit on ten shipments, that $2.00 can cover the overages on a shipment that costs a bit too much.

At present, AuthorSales.Com is set up to compute shipping charges via U.S. Mail, which is typically the most convenient and cost-effective means of shipping books and similar-sized parcels.

As should be obvious from the length of this page of explanations, and from the number of choices on our form for setting up shipping, this all gets a little complex. Here's the good news: more than likely, you can leave it all alone and not adjust our default rates. Our rate calculator will do all the math, and report the shipping charges to you and your customers.

General Points

However, remember, our rate calculator figures out the shipping charge for your customer -- not the amount you will have to pay for postage and shipping. As complicated as our rate system is, it is a highly simplified version of the actual USPS rate schedule. You'll have to compute your own postage.

Note: While the basic shipping rates are based primarily on weight and distance, and those are the main factors we focus on here, there are other questions that you'll have to deal with for each shipping rate. There are various size limitations, restrictions on what can and cannot be sent via various rates, and other issues. For example, if you do overseas shipping, you'll have to fill out a brief customs form for most packages. While this website should be of some help to you in thinking through your shipping rates, you're responsible for working out your own shipping requirements.

It's impossible to set up a one-size-fits-all shipping calculation for all possible package sizes to all possible domestic delivery points and all countries. We've done our best to balance keeping things relatively simple against quoting a fair and accurate rate as often as possible, while still allowing you, our client, to set your own rates. The default rates, are, as best we can tell, "tuned" pretty well for what we believe will be the most common sorts of orders: one to three items about the size and weight of a hardcover book. If that doesn't quite fit your situation, you might want to adjust the defaults.

However, a rate calculator that worries mostly about a three-book shipment from Boston to Miami and a five pound shipment by air to Germany might be less than accurate when computing the charges on 57 pounds via surface to Malaysia. It's possible that our rate calculator will get it wrong now and then, quoting a rate that is significantly too low or too high, though this should be rare. If the customer is only being undercharged by a small amount, don't risk chasing away a $50 sale by trying to collect an extra 50 cents in postage. But if our calculator comes up with a serious undercharge, you can and should do something about it. If it overcharges your customer, it's only right and fair for you to reduce the charges.  It's up to you to check the actual shipping charges and contact the customer if things are seriously out of line either way, and suggest an adjusted shipping charge. (Send a copy all such adjustment requests to authorsales@foxacre.com so we're aware of what's going on.) Negotiate a corrected charge first. Don't ship first and then notify the customer that she should pay you an extra $32.23!

The checkout page for your store will show the customer a warning that shipping rates are estimated, and subject to confirmation, and that the customer will be contacted if any upward adjustment is required.

You can, of course, revise your own shipping rates at any time. (Please do allow us a few days to get the changes online.) Use the corrections form if you're only changing or or two default rates, or just fill out the shipping form all over again if you're doing multiple changes. You can also use the shipping form to request a custom shipping rate. We will either quote you the cost of setting up a custom rate, or advise you that it's not practical.

Also, don't forget that you can set custom rates for each item individually. (You can set rates for Media Mail/BPM and for our international rates. Priority Mail and Parcel Post rates cannot be customized, but as they are mainly weight-based, they shouldn't require customization.) If only one or two items you offer don't work with your defaults, just set custom shipping for that item.

Basic USPS Shipping Rate Structure

There are many different options available for U.S. mail shipping. Generally speaking, each rate is for delivery to one or more zones. For each zone, you pay a certain amount for the first unit of weight (ounce or pound) and then an additional amount for each additional ounce or pound. The additional amounts are not always in even increments. For example in Priorty Mail Zone 4,  postage for a one-pound package is $3.85, for two pounds $4.55 ( or 70 cents more) while three pounds costs $6.05 ($1.50 more than two pounds).  There are similar hiccups in lots of other rates.

Our Basic Rate Computation Structure

We base our rate calculations on the first-pound or first item rate, and then add a value based on the average per-pound increment. This is why a rate calculation that might work very well 99% of the time might occasionally undercharge by a bit. We try and compensate for this by being just a little bit generous to the shipper in our calculations. As discussed below, we have tried to tune our default rates to be the best fit for the most common package size and package destinations. You can adjust these defaults to best suit your needs.

We offer quantity-based or weight-based shipping. Quantity-based shipping will tend to be a little simpler for the customer to figure out, while weight-based shipping will tend to be somewhat more accurate. Either should work just fine. You must select either quantity or weight-based shipping for all of your products.

Here's a useful tip: Even if you go with quantity-base shipping, be sure to enter an accurate shipping weight for each product you enter into your catalog. This information can be useful in other ways, and if you decide to go with weight-based shipping later on, you won't have to re-enter all of your products.

We Might Change the Defaults, but not your Rates

Although we're basing AuthorSales.Com on our years of experience running FoxAcre Press, we're just starting out in the business of handling third-party sales. As we gain more experience, and gaher suggestions from our customers, we will likely update our default shipping values, and/or add other shipping rates. And, of course, if the Postal Service increases its rates, we'll have to reflect those increases in our default settings. We'll keep our clients informed of all such changes -- but we won't change your rates for you just because we've updated our default settings. We won't set a blanket policy here on how we'll handle all such updates, except to say you will have to take some action in order to change your shipping rates.

Note on Express Service:

The normal procedure for a credit-card sale through AuthorSales.Com requires that you, the shipper, check your stock and confirm you are ready to ship. You then notify AuthorSales.Com that you are ready to ship. AuthorSales.Com only processes that card after you have confirmed that you are ready to ship. After the card has been processed, and if the charge clears, AuthorSales.Com will instruct you to ship the order. While none of these tasks should take more than a few minutes each,  email delays and time zone issues could mean the that process of confirming both that you're ready to ship and that the payment has cleared could easily take a day or two. For this reason, we do not offer any sort of rush or Express service. Better not to offer the service than to receive complaints when a "Rush" shipment doesn't even get processed for 48 hours.

We don't offer shipping insurance, return receipts, or other such add-on shipping services. If you wish to include them, make them items in your catalog. We won't count such add-ons against your product total.

Domestic Rates

That's more than enough preliminary information. Let's look at some of the rates, and see how they are handled by AuthorSales.Com's shipping calculator, in some detail.

Priority Mail and Parcel Post

Other than common-sense rules against hazardous substances and the like, there aren't any special restrictions against what can be shipped via First Class, Priority Mail, or Parcel Post.

As you will see if you wade through the following explanation, Priority Mail and Parcel Post are both very complicated, and aren't a good fit with the "ship first  for $x.xx and each additional for $y.yy'' model used on our other rates. In effect, Priority Mail is six distinct wieght-and-distance-based rates plus a single size-based rate, plus a single weight-based rate, and Parcel Post is really seven rates. This complexity is why we offer them as "take it or leave it" options, rather than allowing you, the customer, to set your own rates for them. We have set the amounts charged to the customer under these rates to be just a little bit better than revenue-neutral for you.

First Class Mail is for mail that weighs 13 ounces or less. As of this writing, the charges for first class are 37 cents for the first ounce, and 23 cents for each additional ounce, maxing out at $3.13 for 13 ounces. There is no rate between 13 ounce and one pound, so, in effect, Priority Mail, discussed below, is for items that are over 13 ounces. We fold First Class mail into our Priority Mail rate.  Any order with a shipping weight of eight ounce or less is charged $2.50 and should be sent First Class. Any order weight more than eight ounces will be computed at the Priority Mail rate, will a $4.00 floor rate. This is discussed in more detail below.

Priority Mail is more or less an extension of the first-class postage rate used to mail regular letters domestically. To emphasize, first-class is for mail that weighs 13 ounces or less. Over 13 ounces, use the Priorty Mail rate. Be sure to label each clearly. DON'T label First Class as Priority, or vice versa, or your package could be delayed or even refused.

Priority Mail, Parcel Post, (and BPM, discussed below) divide the United States up into zones, based on their distance from the ZIP code you are shipping from. These zones are numbered 1-8, with 8 being the furthest away. (Note: BPM and Parcel Post merge zones 1 &2, while Priorty Mail merges zones 1, 2 & 3.) For each rate, there is a set rate for each weight of package for each zone. Above the one-pound point, and excluding the Priority Mail flat-rate envelope, all of the rates in effect split up into separate sub-rates, divided up by zone.  For example, ten pounds via Priority Mail is $8.40 to zones 1, 2, and 3,  $14.00 to zone 6, and $19.20 to zone 8.  

However, there are exceptions to this for Priority Mail. Priority Mail charges a flat rate of $3.85 to all zones for packages up to one pound, and also charges a flat rate of $3.85 for up to four pounds of whatever you can fit easily into to a Priority Mail Flat Rate Envelope (PM-FRE). Yes, it says "easily" right there in the regulations shown on the USPS website.  Basically, you can ship up to four pounds of whatever will fit into one of these envelopes to anywhere in the U.S. for $3.85. However, for most books and many other items, the size of the object and not the weight will be the limiting factor. A single very thick hardcover or trade paperback will fit into a PM-FRE, and you might be able to fit two average-sized hardcover books -- but priobably not three. The envelopes can hold several paperbacks, videotapes, DVDs, CDs, etc.

We've tried to make it simple to deal with items that won't fit in one of these envelopes. Mark any items that won't fit in a flat-rate envelope as "oversized" on the product setup form. If the item is labeled as oversized, our system will automatically compute the Priority Mail shipping charges based on weight alone and ignore the flat rate rules.

Parcel Post's one-pound rates are so close across the zones (there's literally about 6 cents between cheapest and most expensive) they might as well be one flat rate, and we treat them as such.

Our First Class/Priority calculator charges $2.50 for any order of eight ounces or less. This charge should allow for postage and your packaging materials and so on. Our Firs Class/Priorty Mail calculator charges $4.00 for all other single-item orders, as we're assuming you'll use the (free) Priorty Mail Flat Rate Envelope (PM-FRE). Exception: if an order includes one or more items that you have marked as "oversized" the order is based on strictly on the weight-and-zones rules of the Priority Mail Rate. In other words, orders over eight ounces with one than one item will have postage computed on the weight-and-zone basis.

For both Priority Mail over eight ounces that doesn't use a flat rate envelope, and for Parcel Post, our calculator computes the charges to your customer by first toting up the shipping weight for all the items in the order and adding the first-pound fee for the first pound. It then uses a look-up table to select the appropriate zone rate based on your shipping ZIP code and the destination ZIP code. It then multiplies the number of remaining pounds by a value based on an average of several per-pound rate increments for delivery to that zone. The calculator them adds that result to the total.

Note: remember that the incremental charges in the official rate sheet are not the same for all weight increments. For this reason, in some cases, the value computed by the above method might therefore be a few cents lower than the actual rate. However, the calculator compensates for this. Once our calculator has worked out  the shipping charge, it then adds 50 cents to this rate-based total to cover the cost of your time and your packaging materials, and to allow a little margin for error.

Priority Mail Examples

The following table gives some examples of what our Priority Mail Calculator would charge the customer, what you'd have to pay in postage, and a few notes and comments. We've chosen some examples that should demonstrate just how tricky postage calculations can be. The overages shown below should be enough to cover your cost of packing materials, and also cover you in the rare instance when you undercharge on shipping. Note that, as per USPS rules, all weights are rounded up to the next increment. For example, a four-pound three-ounce package is computed at the five-pound rate.

Our Parcel Post calculator does not have any flat-rate exceptions or conditions, but is based strictly on the Parcel Post weight-and-zone rules. 

For most package weight-zone combination under 10 pounds or so, Parcel Post is not that much cheaper than Priority Mail. For various reasons, and in certain circumstances, sending a smaller package via Parcel Post  can actually be more expensive than Priority Mail, both for you and for your customer. Parcel Post does become significantly cheaper that Priority Mail for heavier shipments. Parcel Post is really only a good choice for heavier items. There may or may not be much point to you offering it.

Media Mail and Bound Printed Matter

Our rate calculator treats these two rates as one, and simply charges X for the first unit or half pound, and then Y for each additional unit or half-pound.

The Media Mail and Bound Printed Matter rates are intended specifically for shipping books and/or other media (check this USPS page for the rules) and are especially good deals. Because Media Mail is usually the better rate, and because the two rates are usually pretty close -- and because Media Mail is a lot easier to compute -- we've bundled these two rates into one for purposes of calculating what to charge the customer. Use a rate sheet like this one from FoxAcre Press (parent of AuthorSales.Com) to choose between the two rates on a package-by-package basis.

However, as you will see from the regulations, the Media Mail rate is only for books, CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, and similar items, while BPM is basically restricted to books and magazines. If a given package includes other items, you can't use these rates. You'll have to use another rate, such as Priority Mail or Parcel Post.

If you're shipping items that qualify under BPM but not Media Mail, you might need to adjust the rates to reflect that.

Take a look at our Product Setup Form and you'll see the question Is this item eligible to be shipped via the Media Mail or Bound Printed Matter rates? If you mark "no" under the question and if the customer includes that item in an order and selects MM/BPM shipping, the customer will get a warning message that the shipment is not eligible for the rate. The customer will be advised to go back and select another rate.

There will be exceptions to this, but In general, the Media Mail/Bound Printed Matter rate is much cheaper than Parcel Post and the service is similar. If you are only shipping items that qualify for MM/BPM, there is very little point in offering Parcel Post shipping.

International Rates

Most of this discussion will concern itself with Airmail rates rather than Surface rates. The abbreviations for the rates used below aren't standard or official names. They are just there to save on writing and reading the long official names for these rates over and over.

For each international rate, our calculator charges X for the first unit or half-pound, and Y for each additional unit or half-pound. The bad news is that international rates aren't that simple. The good news is that you can often send things more cheaply than what the calculator comes up with, but more on that in a minute. First, keep a keep point in mind: there's a lot more than one Airmail rate for overseas packages. In the interests of keeping our rate calculator from being even more complicated for you, for your customers, and for us, we've folded all of the various Airmail rates for each region into one calculation. No one rate is going to be the best choice for every possible package. You'll have to check the various possible rates for each shipment and select the most appropriate rate. Probably the easiest way to do this is to use the USPS index of countries page listed a bit further down this page to check the various available rates for the destination country.

Our shipping options break the world up this way:

• Domestic shipment to the U.S.
• Canada via Air/Priority
• Mexico via Air/Priority
• Europe Via Air (click on link to see listed countries)
• All other places via Air
• All places outside the U.S. (including Canada and Mexico) via Surface..

Here's a very handy tip: Go to this USPS page for a index of countries. You can select the country you're interested in and get a complete breakdown of rules, regs, and rates for shipping to that destination. If you do most of your overseas shipping to just one or two countries, it's a lot easier to check all the rates for that specific country, rather than ploughing through all the giant rate charts that cover every country on Earth. Print out the info for countries of interest to you for future reference.

Now let's talk rates. We'll move through some of the rates most appropriate to our likely clients, starting with the rate best for the smallest packages to the rate best for the heaviest packages. Remember, we're going to be talking the rates you'll have to pay. It's up to you to take this information, do further research, and decide what to charge your customers.

Airmail Letter-Post (AMLP)

This is the rate most people are likely thinking of when they think of Air Mail. Airmail Letter-post can be used for smaller packages, but is really intended for letters. It will usually be cheaper than other rares for shipments under about 12 ounces, though it is available up to 64 ounces (4 pounds).  If you are shipping mainly small items (for example, CDs) that are suited to this rate, you should probably adjust the default values in our rate calculator based on this rate. 

Global Priority Mail (GPM)

Because it is usually the cheapest and easiest rate to deal with for single-item shipments of books and similiar-sized items, it's likely you'll use Global Priority Mail (GPM) and use Global Priority Mail Flat-Rate Envelopes (GPM-FRE) whenever possible. In essence, GPM has certain restrictions that shouldn't be much of a problem for most of our clients, and is just about as fast as Airmail Letter-Post to most countries, but cheaper. As with any overseas shipment, you should check to make sure that your package contents meet the rate requirements, and you should also be aware that you'll likely have to fill out a short customs form for most packages.

Our rate calculator basically assumes that you'll use GPM and GPM FREs when possible, and AMLP when necessary. Airmail Parcel Post (discussed below) can be used for heavier items.

See this USPS page for more detailed info on Global Priority Mail, where it can be sent from, and where it can be sent to. The short form is that you can send it from most major metropolitan areas in the U.S. and send it to most of the places in the world from which you're likely to receive orders. The main exception is that service to Mexico is limited to Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey, and that service to Israel is limited to is limited to Haifa, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv.

There are two sizes of GPM-FRE: Small - 6 x 10 inches and Large - 9-1/2 x 12-1/2 inches.  You can ship anything up to four pounds in these envelopes.  

• To Canada and (and the above Mexican cities) small GPM-FREs cost $4.00. Large GPM-FREs cost $7.00.  
• All other GPM services areas: small GPM-FREs cost $5.00, and large GPM-FREs are $9.00.

Global Priority Mail also has a zone-based Variable-weight option, based on half-pound increments that are fairly but not entirely consistent by increment. For example, shipments to Europe are $8.00 for a half pound, $10 for a pound, $12 for one and a half pounds, and $15 for two pounds. In just about all the cases, using a GPM-FRE is a better buy than the Variable-weight option -- if your shipment will fit in one.

The short form: if you can use GPM-FREs for a given shipment overseas, you probably should, as it is likely to be cheaper and easier than using weight-based GPM or other airmail rates.  In some cases, it will make sense to split up a larger shipment into two or more GPM-FREs, rather than send everything in one GPM or AMLP package.

Airmail Parcel Post (AMPP)

GPM and AMLP are both limited to a maximum of four pounds. Taking over where GPM leaves off, Airmail Parcel Post (AMPP) is available for shipments up to about 70 pounds (though certain countries may have other maximum weight limits) and might take a bit longer to get there, depending on the country. AMPP is a very complicated rate, with no fewer than 13 (!) zones. Make it easy on yourself: use the USPS Country Index  to find the cost for this and other rates for the country in question, rather than decyphering all the myriad rate tables with you secret decoder ring. Generally speaking, AMPP is more or less in line with the other Air Mail rates, but it does allow for much larger maximum shipping weights. If you are shipping mainly larger and heavier items, you might want to adjust your airmail rates to more closely reflect AMPP.

Surface Mail

The rates we're concerned with are Global Economy Parcel Post (GEPP) and Economy (Surface) Letter Post (ESLP). See this USPS Global Economy Services webpage for links to information on these rates. The main problem with the surface mail is likely to be certain of the customers who select it. FoxAcre Press, the parent of AuthorSales.Com, had a few recent headaches with customers who ordered Surface Mail and then raised eight kinds of stink when their shipments took a long time to arrive .The checkout page for your store makes it clear that Surface Mail is slow, but be prepared for the occassional impatient cheapskate.

However, such customers are the exception. Mostly this rate is here to retain customers who might hesitated to buy because of high shipping charges. You need to offer surface mail in order not to chase them off.

Note: it is often the case that, for small shipments, Surface Mail costs just about as much as a GPM-FRE, or some other form of Airmail Service.  For example, it costs $11.10 to ship four pounds to Germany via ESLP -- but a large GPM-FRE costs only $9.00. Obviously, everyone wins if you just go with the GPM-FRE. Be sure to stick a note in the package, explaining that faster was cheaper, so as to avoid a customer thinking he was being charged for a more expensive service.  

We have set our default surface rate based on the rates to the most expensive zones for ESLP, which has a maximum weight of four pounds. The defaults are a good fit for ESLP, but will result in significant undercharges for heavier packages shipped via GEPP to some countries. If practical, break your shipments up into smaller packages that can be shipped via ESLP, or else adjust the default rates.