Staggered by Createspace's distribution costs

[James_Wilde]

Just got my reply from Createspace:

Hello James,

Thank you for contacting us about our shipping costs.

Effective January 4, 2011, our shipping rates have been adjusted to reflect a standard rate increase passed on from shipping carriers. Additionally, shipping rates are subject to change without notice based on carrier rate fluctuations. We appreciate your understanding.

When I check the USPS site, I get the following:

Priority Mail International Large Video Flat Rate Box ** $11.95 $13.95 9-1/4”x 6-1/4” x 1-3/8”
Priority Mail International Medium Flat Rate Box (FRB-1) $27.95 $45.50 11" x 8-1/2" x 5-1/2"

Priority mail appears to be what Createspace calls Standard rate, based on delivery time. The first price is for the US and Canada, the second, in red, for all other countries. Almost no books will fall within the smaller category, you will notice, so a book to Europe via the postal service will in future cost $45.50.

Economy service, which takes three weeks as opposed to the 5-7 days of the previous example, has the following:

12oz $9.04 12 oz is approximately 360 grams
16oz $10.76 16 oz is approximately 480 grams
20 $12.48 20 oz is approximately 600 grams

So there you have it. Hopefully Amazon uses another delivery agent, or a book can be printed at, say, amazon.co.uk for delivery within Europe.

Or else I can try Kate's suggestion for local printing.

Note added later: One thing struck me when I started thinking about this: the US Postal Service has with this move effectively sunk every US distributor of pbooks to the rest of the world. If a book is now going to cost, say, $10-20 to buy and $45 to ship, no-one's going to buy a pbook from the US ever again.

Might do something for the ebook market though!

[JeremyR]

Unfortunately the Post Office is facing what the automakers (and to be honest, a lot of other things) face - more and more pension liability and no growth to pay for it.

So they lose money, then raise prices on shipping to compensate. Which only means people use them less and they lose even more money.

Then again, as our money is also becoming more and more worthless, I'd think you'd be doing well on the exchange rate.