Image courtesy of Boians Cho Joo Young/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A few weeks ago, I ventured out of my little writing den to mail two copies of Desperately Ever After–one to a fellow author and one to my first Goodreads contest winner.
Like many new authors, I’d been led to believe that rising postage had made print copies prohibitively expensive to give away. And with the rise of e-books, I should avoid doing so at all costs. But as I’ve said before, there’s just something about holding a physical book in your hands. So I sucked it up and pulled out my envelopes.
After assuring the teller that I was not attempting to send any live animals, explosives, drugs, or day-old poultry, this is what happened:
“What’s in it?” she asks, doing that casual I’m-not-actually-looking-at-you thing that postal workers so often do.
“It’s just a book.”
“You want the book rate?”
My head knocks back. She actually looks me in the eye and initiates a human connection. “There’s a book rate?”
Yup, there’s a book rate, now called “media mail,” which is billed as “a cost-effective way to send educational materials” (including books!) “in 2 to 8 business days.” True, 2 to 8 business days is not the same as priority mail, but I wasn’t in a rush and $2.65 sounded a heck of a lot better than $6-plus. Multiply that by both copies, and I was just raking in the dough 😉
It was the sort of good news I just had to share. Way to go, US government, for giving a little something back…
For more information about media mail, check out this USPS link. And happy writing/reading!
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