Book Links

Easy Way To Track Those Books You Ship

Posted by hughlh

I found this great website:

 http://isnoop.net/tracking/

Very simple form, enter the tracking number from UPS, FedEx, USPS, or DHL/AirBorne and it will let you know where the package is.

Also very cool is it will generate an RSS Feed for the number, so you can be updated real time when changes occur.

How To Ship Books You Have Sold

Posted by hughlh

I think the time has come to talk about shipping books. We booksellers seem given to debate naturally, and hardly any subject is debated more. All of us tend to believe that our way is correct, and the most often touted defense is “that we have never had any complaints”.

That is somewhat akin to a doctor saying bleeding the patient works because nobody has complained when his patient died. Read the rest of this entry »

How To Pack And Ship Ephemera and Paper

Posted by hughlh

The hardest thing to ship, in my opinion, is ephemera. It is tempting to just throw that postcard or flyer in a flat envelope and sent it on, or to place a piece of cardboard in the envelope with it and send it out. Obviously, each piece is different, but I think we can keep our objectives we covered in part 1 in mind as we go. Read the rest of this entry »

Shipping Books Safely- How To Pack The Book You Have Sold

Posted by hughlh

Packaging books is simplicity itself.

1. Wrap the book in tissue paper

There are several reasons for doing this:

- It looks nice.
- It keeps the book tight, that is, it does not let the book come open, slide around, and so on
-It provides an initial layer of protection against dust and grime getting to the book Read the rest of this entry »

How To Ship More Than One Book (Multiple Volumes)

Posted by hughlh

A reader wrote in and asked the following question:I have a set of Harvard Classics I intend to sell soon. It is roughly 50 volumes. When shipping a set, do you follow the same procedure you already discussed for wrapping each individual volume? Is it any more or less safe to wrap the books in small groups? Should I try to ship this many books in one big box, or am I better off shipping in two or three (or more) smaller boxes? For discussion purposes, assume I am sending the set of books within the U.S.

Well, the only way I know to answer this is to tell you what I would do and have done in the past.
Read the rest of this entry »

Using B-Flute To Ship Books, Pro’s and Cons

Posted by hughlh

Over at Craig Stark’s bookthink.com there is a set of articles (1 & 2) extolling the virtues of shipping books wrapped in B-flute in lieu of using boxes. For the uninitiated among you, B-Flute is basically corrugated cardboard with paper on only one side. Read the rest of this entry »