Whether you run an online bookstore or need to ship a book to a customer, USPS Media Mail Service offers your business benefits like low-cost, weight-based shipping and free tracking. When packaging your book for mailing, you must adhere to USPS size and weight requirements and avoid placing ineligible items, such as advertisements, in the box or envelope. While you won’t be able to use the USPS website to print your media mail postage, you do have other options online and offline.
When shipping a book, you must follow some basic USPS Media Mail rules. your book must be eight pages or more, may not contain advertising, and may not be a comic book. however, you may include some other items with the book, such as sheet music, cds, movies, dvds, and educational materials.
Although your book will likely weigh much less, the USPS will allow a 70 pound maximum for a media mailing. the box or envelope you use to mail the book will need a combined circumference (height and width added together and multiplied by two) and a length of no more than 108 inches.
usps offers two different prices for media mail depending on whether you pay retail or commercial rates. In both cases, the USPS charges you only based on the weight of the package. therefore, you will not pay more to ship the same book nationwide than you would to ship it within the same state.
The 2020 retail price for shipping a one-pound media mail package is $2.80, and will add $0.54 per each additional pound. so if your book shipment weighs five pounds, that results in a shipping fee of $4.92. on the other hand, a 10-pound package would cost $7.60 to ship using media mail.
2020 business rates for multimedia mail vary and cost more if you do basic presort than if you presort your packages by five-digit ZIP code. the base price to send a one-pound media mail package with the five-digit pre-sort option is $2.10 and goes up to $2.67 with the pre-sort option basic. each additional pound will cost 0.53 usd or 0.54 usd. therefore, shipping a five-pound book might cost $4.22 or $4.79, and a 10-pound book might cost $6.90 or $7.47.
Your options for packaging multimedia mail include flat cardboard envelopes, padded envelopes, and boxes. If you are sending a book in a postal envelope, you can put a cardboard insert on both sides of the book. When using a box to ship books, use an appropriate size and insert packing peanuts, bubble wrap, or shipping paper to fill in any extra space. then you can insert any packing slip and seal the package for mailing.
If you’d rather buy media mail postage without going to the post office, you’ll need to look somewhere other than the USPS website. After weighing the package, your options may include using usps metered mail, paypal’s shipping tools, or subscribing to a mail service like pirate ship or stamps.com. You can then purchase and print your media mailing label and choose from options like scheduling a USPS pickup or dropping off the book at an authorized mailing location.
Otherwise, you can take your package to your local post office where an employee will weigh the package, charge you the appropriate rate, and ship it for you. Please note that due to media mail restrictions, the worker may inspect your package to ensure you are only shipping a book and other permitted materials.