Cost of shipping
I have asked the question – how much shipping will be to South Africa? I got a reply to check out the FAQ section. I created an order and it showed that shipping will be $81. Now my question is why is it so expensive to shop a book of $25? Is there not a cheaper way of getting the book?
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I don’t know about overseas shipping, but Blurb’s shipping rates in the US are very high. I just received this email from a friend who ordered my first book. She’s an independent mail-order bookseller, so she’s very familiar with what it costs to ship a book. She says,
“I ordered—but I will not order again from them. I do know shipping costs, and they are so far overpriced had it been anyone but you, I would have cancelled. I feel HAD by those people.”
I have to agree: $7.84 to ship a 40-page paperback via UPS Ground is really excessive, and if my friend is any indication, it’s a major turnoff to customers. I urge Blurb to reconsider their shipping rates, and to offer USPS Media Mail shipping as a low-cost option.
Andy Baird
http://www.andybaird.com/travels/
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Andy, I completely agree with you. I don’t mind using and paying extra for UPS with tracking but a purchase from the BookStore should give USPS Media Mail as an option. UPS for multiple books is a reasonable value but still much higher that Media Mail. I tend to order in bulk and ship using Media Mail to avoid customer annoyance. Media Mail does not usually provide tracking and even if it did my experience with USPS tracking is that it is almost useless compared to UPS. Len
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I’m the shipping cost complainer <del>- USPS priority online postage has free tracking (or maybe it is sixteen cents!) and is less than what I was charged for Andy Baird’s book. There is nothing special about UPS Ground. It is no safer, no more secure, and more expensive. And that poor customer from South Africa should know that USPS International Priority is so much less than he paid here, I would be ashamed to tell him. If he bought from my online store, I work with International customers to find them the least expensive, most secure possible way of shipping. I buy from dealers who offer the same courtesy. I will not be back to Blurb -</del> perhaps in the future but not until they have the kinks worked out. Len, I have not had problems with USPS tracking, so we have different experiences. It is not easy to make a blanket statement about such things.
Good luck, all!!
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Cost around the $81 to get shipped to Australia, but Blurb has just started a cheaper option of using Swiss Post which I used for my last book. So not sure which option you selected to get the $81 for South Africa, but have a look at the Swiss Post options if you have not tried it. Takes a little bit longer, but much lower cost option. But I have to aggree with others Blurb’s shipping does seem expensive for a single book. When I order books from Amazon it’s much cheaper. So I hope they get their shipping sorted out to reduce the costs. Cheers
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Also note – that IF you do opt for the EMS (Swiss Post) shipping – there is NO TRACKING facility available, so, once mailed, it’s in the lap of the gods! Cheers; Lee
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Just don’t use UPS period.
What’s wrong with USPS Priority Air and Express. Fast, efficient, trackable and CHEAP!!!
These are BOOKS you’re shipping! Use some common sense. Ask APPLE. Aperature books get there fast and intact.
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Does anyone at BLURB actually read these blogs?
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I agree that the shipping cost (and the long production time) have me shopping around for an alternative to Blurb. Great books, good binding, but 10 days to produce a book and over $10 as the cheapest (slow) shipping within the continental USA is ridiculous. Apple’s books are more expensive on a page-by-page basis, but are produced in 2 days and for a similar shipping cost typically get to your door in 3 additional days by FedEx.
This discussion has similarities with the long debate on eBay, where some stores offer great prices only to fleece the buyers with over-charging on shipping. People react just like the original poster on this thread: they do not come back.
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Please let us know if your experience with Apple books are as good as you state. I speak about Blurb from a customer’s perspective and while I would like some changes/options, think the product is great and so is the service.
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Apple is great. Fast, good quality, no hassles and quick support response. You have to check them more closely as the program isn’t as idiot-proof as this one. They just don’t allow you to sell the books online, which what Blurb has going for it.
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I’ve used both Apple and Blurb and found the quality pretty similar. I never recieved a book from Apple any quicker than Blurb, and the shipping price was about the same. I don’t remember the exact price for either, but it was under $10, around $7 I think. It was never, as Phill said above, over $10. I’ve bought the stuff from (for example) Lands End and used the same shipping method (reg. ground UPS) and had it take as many as 2 weeks or as little as one. I think much depends on how busy everyone is. I would seriously doubt that Blurb is taking a cut on shipping. They are new to this and working it out. To compare their shipping prices to Amazon’s is pretty silly since Blurb’s volume must be a small fraction of Amazon’s, and like everything else, volume lowers the price. Apple charges the same as Blurb for half as many pages, and then charges 99 cents a page up to a max of 100 pages. So a 100 page book would be about $120. With Blurb, instead of 20 pages for $29.99 you get 40 and an 80-120 page book is $37.95. You can do up to 440 pages for well less than $100. For that difference you could damn near have your book couriered to you. But, the big difference is their software. Blurb’s is much more sophisticated, if somewhat buggy. But, like the shipping they seem serious about making it better. I’ve been very pleased with the books I’ve made with Blurb, and everyone who sees them is amazed.
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Hi,
Yes, Blurb seems to have a much better deal when it comes to per page cost and number of pages it can offer. It does not allow PDF output, however. Books made through Aperature have this.
But the big rub is the shipping. I would like to think I have an international customer base. But nobody international will order a book at UPS prices. The shipping can be double the actual retail of the book. US Express Mail, Priority Air and EMS are all reasonable and dependable. Ask anyone who has purchased high-end expensive camera gear from B&H Photo. Those guys have the shipping down to a science.
If Blurb’s intent is to only serve the US, then UPS is as good as any other, although it has pretty consistently delivered damaged goods to me, so I won’t use them unless forced. Blurb needs a few alternatives and reasonably priced international shipping is the key to going global.
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To be clear, we do offer Swiss Post in addtion to UPS for European, Asian, Pacific destinations. Reference our Pricing and Shipping page for complete information on shipping options per region. http://www.blurb.com/create/book/pricing#shipping_rates And rest assured, we are not making any money on shipping.
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OK, I give up. Many Pacific destinations and all US territories are serviced by trackable US Express Mail and insurable Priority Air Mail from USPS. USPS and international EMS are also partnered and very reliable options. I was not offered a Swiss Post option when I tried to ship my books to good ol’ US zip code 96921 in Guam (that’s the Pacific). UPS wanted $125 dollars for a $90 book. US Express Mail would have been about $30 with 3-day delivery and tracking. Priority Air would have been about $18 with a 10 day or less delivery time.
What advantage does untrackable Swiss Post have over US Mail and EMS? I see none although its impossible to gauge pricing as no price examples for Swiss Post are listed and they are not offered to this part of the Pacific apparently.
We don’t care if you make money or not as long as you offer reasonable shipping alternatives to useless UPS.
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As mentioned in previous posts, we are actively searching out alternatives to UPS that our US based printers can support. If USPS was a supported option we would not hesitate moving forward with it. Unfortunately our options are limited at this time.
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Do you mean label printers? Again, see B&H Photo. They use computer bar coded labels for Priority and Express with no problems. You can also generate USPS labels right from the USPS website.
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No…I am referring to our print partners.
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I just purchased my first book and it was a confusing experience. Part of that was the shipping – I’m in Australia which is not listed in the shipping options and the SwissPost options seem to refer to Europe (as you might expect). When the checkout came up offerring UPS at $71 (for an $85 book) and the much more reasonable SwissPost options of $21 and a bit more for priority I’m left wondering if that is an error – why would the Swiss deliver here? Why not say clearly that it’s your postal carrier for international shipments to anywhere they cover?
Given that I had real problems just ordering (there’s no clue what’s gone wrong if you don’t enter a quantity and no instruction to do that) I would have given up if it was not a friend’s book. Sales aren’t going to be good if you make it tough for newbies.
Suggestion to staff – get a friend who has never done it to navigate your system and make notes, preferably one who isn’t that bright and/or isn’t in the US. Blurb is not really user friendly yet for the casual Amazon type buyer like me.
Oh and I concur on B&H NY – I have an account there and they are brilliant. Usually a USPS option that avoids brokerage and taxes, fast and trackable (although USPS tracking is a joke).
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Did you happen to check the pricing and shipping page? We added Australia to the list of Swiss Post supported countries with the intent of providing a more cost effective alternative to UPS. We will continue to look at additional solutions and will take your recommendation into consideration. Per the quantity issue, as authors can sell both hardcover and sotfcover versions we cannot default to a quantity value without creating confusion for another set of users, We are looking at various ways to better message this quantity error; making it more clear that specifying a quantity is a required step in the check out process.
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I was shocked at the price to ship a single book to Alaska, over $20. I’m probably going to have to take orders and do a bulk order taking all the convenience out of the order on line. Ultimatly fewer books will sell and less money to our animal shelter. I guess thats one issue I didn’t consider before I spent 2 months on collecting stories and pictures my book. I checked with ups on line and blurb isn’t making any money off of the shipping from our end. A USPS option sure would be nice.
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Blurb Staff: Please please please offer shipping by regular US post or FEDEX to Canada instead of UPS. On my very first order, UPS delivered my book to Brooklyn St instead of Brookmount Road, even though the address given them was correct. Apparently they cannot read street signs correctly. What shockingly bad performance in this day and age.
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My book cost $65….the shipping was $30 (Alaska)....all of any potential profit went to the shipper. A prepaid USPS box is about $8.
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Well, now the topic has even more personal impact for me: I just lost a 25-book order because of ridiculously high UPS shipping costs. A client was planning to buy a copy of “Quiet Waters” for each employee of his company as a holiday gift. But when he realized that the per-copy shipping cost for my little 40-page, $15.95 book was in the neighborhood of $7-$9, that killed the deal.
Blurb folks, I’ll say it again: you’ve GOT to offer less expensive shipping options, and USPS Media Mail is the prime contender. With shipping as costly as it is now, there’s not much point in my doing any more Blurb books, because nobody will buy them. Yes, I know you’re working on this…well, please work harder! :-)
Andy Baird
http://www.andybaird.com/travels/
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So if theyre all employees of the same company, order them all at once and the cost to have them all shipped is only $8.59. Next day air on the whole 25 is only $46, less than $2 a book.
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I want to clarify some thing that was discussed in some early postings of this thread relaive to USPS shipping. It is true that flate rate priority USPS is only $8.50 for any place in the US including Hawaii and Alaska (great bargain for those locations) and Media mail is the least expensive for books. But, in neither case is tracking available by USPS. It is only available for Express mail, which is the most expensive of all. There is something called Confirmation which is available for the first two options which some people confuse with tracking. All confirmation does is let you know that the package reached its destination. Great for the shipper but in the case of Blurb customers it only tells you what you know. You either received it or not. So I assume USPS is the same as Swiss Post, lower cost but no tracking. I still would like the option of Media mail or flate rate priority.
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“So if theyre all employees of the same company, order them all at once and the cost to have them all shipped is only $8.59. Next day air on the whole 25 is only $46, less than $2 a book.”
Yes, my client considered doing that, but then the 25 books would have had to be individually repacked, addressed and mailed. That’s a minimum of an hour’s labor ($25-$40, depending on which of his employees did the job), plus the cost of padded boxes or envelopes (about $15-$20), and of course postage (about $50).
The total cost would have been somewhere between $90 and $150, or $4-$6 a copy—a slight saving over UPS shipping from Blurb, but not nearly as much as you’d think, and not enough to convince my client to go ahead. But if Blurb were able to offer Media Mail shipping, the cost per copy would drop below $2. That’s a big difference!
Andy Baird
http://www.andybaird.com/travels/
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Achtung Blurb! Ojo! Please listen up! I published 4 books with My Publisher and won’t publish anymore with them because their customer service is a joke and their S & H is too high. It actually cost $17 to ship my books by FedEx ground (12 pounds) but I had to pay them $67. And the wrapping was annihilated by the time it got here. I hope someone will let me know when Blurb decides to charge what it actually costs. or close to it anyway. Or have I hopefully misunderstood what Blurb charges?
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UPDATE! The first week of November I ordered two different books from Apple through the Aperature program. One was an order for two hard cover copies of one volume. The other an order for 3 soft cover copies. Within 10 days the books were printed and both volumes shipped in separate boxes arrived intact via USPS Priority Air Mail.
I also ordered 2 copies of a book I produced through Blurb.
Since Blurb uses only UPS, which charges prohibitive shipping rates outside of the Cont’l US, the Blurb solution was to ship the book to my nephew in Minneapolis who then had to re-ship to me. He got the books after I got my Apple order in Guam and has re-shipped. I still await this order.
Now, Blurb could have simply shipped directly to me using USPS Priority Air (which is not trackable but neither is Blurb’s Swiss Post option so why is Swiss Post so great?) or Blurb could have used fast, reliable and trackable USPS Express Mail.
But they didn’t so here I sit with no Blurb book.
It seems like anyone could figure this one out. They need to add USPS as an option. Express Mail works extremely well.
But Blurb continues to blunder.
If I ever get my book, I’ll tell ya how the printing came out.
TR
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Shipping is way too high. This is a great idea turned sour by shipping costs. A $20 paperback costs almost $10 to ship? No way. If Blurb can figure this out and make shipping more competitive, it will flourish. If not, then who wants it? There are alternatives out there that work quite well and don’t rape you when it comes to shipping.
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Know this is a high priority for us in the coming year. Everyone’s repeated frustrations are valid and we are working with our print partners to come up with a solution. I will personally be the first to announce this, along with the international SYP program, once it is made available.
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I hope this would be a major priority. I find it very hard to believe your print partners can set up for Swiss Post but can’t figure out how to use the USPS. It isn’t rocket science.
UPDATE: My book, shipped to the relative as suggested by Blurb, did finally arrive. I did have to pay for shipping twice with this silly method. Should I ask my overseas customers to do this as well. I hope they all have friends and relatives in the US.
HOWEVER, the book itself is great. Color is true, paper nice, binding good. The product is great. I can sell this without shame.
Now Blurb just needs to do two things:
1) Work on cost of product so we can actually resell the product to people other than millionaires and rich relaltives. Quantity discounts of something more substantial than 10% would be also welcome.
2) Figure out how to ship to the world, as many companies have done. Again, order something from B&H Photo in NYC and ship it anywhere. Blurb can see just how simple it really is by stealing this shipping system (and adding Media mail).
Thanks for the great product. Get to work on this shipping fiasco.
TR
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I have just made two of my books public and sent announcements to MANY friends and relatives. All I hear from everyone is how nice the book looks and HOW HIGH the shipping cost is. Many of them said they are NOT ORDERING BOOKS due to the excessive freight charges. Just to check we went through the motions of ordering and we were SHOCKED at the cost of shipping. Come on BLURB, get with it. You must be making money on the book – we certainly aren’t making that much on it. Lower the shipping and increase your sales…...... and your profits….
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why is it that blurb refuse to reply to these comments? there have been numerous threads of complaints before… surely they must be aware of these stinging issues?!?
http://forums.blurb.com/forums/3/topics/245#posts-1030
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deadsumo, We do reply to comments. In fact, there are five comments in this thread alone from "Staff." We reply when we have something to add to the conversation. I’m sure you don’t lke seeing us post the same information over and over again when we clearly have little to no new information to relay. And Brent’s post above, along with many other recent posts from him, state that we are working on this and hope to have new options in Q1. Thanks for your patience. – Kathy
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just signed on to order a small booklet (14.95), but will pass because of the $10 shipping. will this comment be visible in two minutes when i cancel the account i just opened? bye.
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Just went to order a 175 page hardback book from the UK – price for the book is absolutely brilliant, £24.95.
I’m EXTREMELY dissuaded by the numerous warnings by Blurb that if I don’t choose a trackable service, wave goodbye to any support whatsoever if there’s a problem, very promising, so I grit my teeth and wait to see what other options are available.
£11.06 for UPS Standard. Now, that’s pretty high. Relatively speaking it’s almost half the cost of the book. Tolerable, but if the book was any smaller and less expensive I doubt the price will drop relatively, which makes for VERY expensive cheapest possible shipping.
£27.19 for UPS Express Saver. THAT’S MORE THAN THE PRICE OF THE BOOK!
£31.29 For UPS Express… Words fail me.
Quite apart from the fact that I can’t set up my own ‘shop’ with Blurb as I’m not a US resident, basically I get the impression from Blurb’s official warnings that not selecting a trackable option is to be exceptionally cavalier with my money and my book, and yet those prices are out of this world. I couldn’t even attempt to sell my book privately with a mark up, as it would mean realistically each book would have to be at least £40 or so, and that’s only about £3 profit. Utterly ridiculous.
It’s now almost halfway through Q1 and after much excitement about getting my book done and being able to make it available on my photoblog, I can pretty much write that off. I might get my book done anyway because you’re the only company that can handle that size of book (amazingly – I don’t know why people like Bob Books in Switzerland can’t do over 120 pages). I appreciate you have no news so you don’t add anything, but I would appreciate a brief, tactful explanation of why it is your print partners won’t let you use anyone except UPS, as that’s the reason you keep giving for the problem.
Until this issue is fixed, I’m afraid you can count on not a single penny from me, despite a very promising software application and book printing service. A real shame, and crushingly disappointing.
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owen-b, Your woes are legit and I’m sorry we don’t have a simple answer for you regarding shipping. We offer UPS and Swiss Post for the time being. We are offering options as quickly as we can, but as you can imagine, some things that might appear simple to some are not especially simple for a growing company, with an increasing number of new customers, and a of course, a number of printers. We have to take a lot of things into consideration before making changes or offering new options. We don’t roll out new things without making sure that everything has been tested and works to our satisfaction. That said, we are vigourously researching new shipping options as Brent stated in his post. As soon as we have more information, we will post it to the blog and forums. Hope that helps. – Kathy
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I’ve had the same plea that we can ship USPS but after I thought about it I changed my mind. There is an option for Alaska at the bottom of this post. I worked in printing companies for 30 years. I am very familiar with shipping procedures, exclusive shipper’s contracts with printers, and the hassle of preparing different shipping forms, organizing pick upsfrom 3-4 shipping companies and the time consuming reconcliation when books aren’t recieved. So that a printer in Tukwilla (near Seattle) , and I think I know who it is, can produce a book for $29.95 with Blurb and the printer making any money at all, , everything has to run smoothly, no gliches, one process for everything including shipping. Like every other company that services Alaska, UPS is royally making love in a less than loving way to Alaska. Our venting should be toward UPS not Blurb. Just for fun, mine not the estimator’s, I priced a similar book at a printing company in Seattle, very close to one of Blurbs printing partner. My $29.95 book was quoted at $300 on their Indigo digital. It’s not the printing it’s the binding that blows it. To print and bind 1000 copies conventionally, offset sheet fed, and set up the binding, $14,000. We are looking for a benefactor, sponsor, or grant to produce the book this way If you in Alaska you do have an option. Have your shipment sent to www.shiptoalaska.com (its just across town) Ship to Alaska ships at a much lower rate. If you can’t pick up the shipment in Anchorage they will send it USPS. On 2 lbs I can get it for $20 total shipping as opposed to $32. Linda www.imageworkspub.com www.aklurcher.com www.alaskadognews.com
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I keep reading these posts about different shipping methods and just scratch my head at it all. Nowadays national postal services are competing vigorously with each other and I would have thought they would offer good deals. When I order my books (which have all been incredibly well received because of the quality) they get printed in the Netherlands I think and then shipped by UPS, The one time I used Swisspost it was a shambles. Surely local/national postal administrations are all clamouring for business and can offer better deals. Royal Mail in UK is bending over backwards to attract customers and I would guess that the equivalent organisations in Netherlands, USA etc would be doing the same. I just ordered some new books for my family and opted for UPS because in quantity it is better for reliability – but I bet it would have been cheaper and just as efficient if the local postal service had been available.
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Hi, Im very upset that the shipping price is so high, I live in South Africa and just uploaded my book and was ready to purchase, but then I see that my $ 39.95 book will cost me $ 91.16 to ship! Thats just crazy! Thats more than double the price of the book! And I only have one option to choose from - "UPS Express Saver" I’ve ordered many items from America before and never had to pay anything close to this for shipping. My next concern is that I dont mind waiting a few weeks but that will mean that I will have to re-upload my book as it only stays active for a few days on your servers. Please can something be arranged ASAP, otherwise im going to have to take my business somewhere else.
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I created one 8X10 Book with 160 pages. The shipping was over $11 to Arkansas. Months later I created another 160 page book and order 3 books at once. The cost was $12.. I don’t know what the shipping is on 10 books but the 10% discount would certainly help. This still offers no option on getting a single proof copy. I would hate to order 10 books without a preview. I have published 20 books on Lulu. Shipping is very reasonable, quality good. But if you want a high quality hardcover with dust jacket. Blurb is the better choice.
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So, someone from staff posted in November of 2007 that it’s a big priority for them to look into better shipping fees. It’s now March 2008. I just ordered a book and the shipping charge made my jaw drop. There was also a post here from Staff that they are not making money off of shipping. That is absolutely not true, of course they are at these rates. My husband ships parts all day long and ships boxes bigger than a book for half the price, through the same company, UPS. Staff can you please respond? Why are you not charging standard UPS rates?
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To get around the issue, i had to ship my book to a friend in London, and get them to ship it to me from London to SA. That way im saving 5 times the amount of the shipping costs.
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My uncle is a postman and he was very straight forward… Media mail goes through a different process. The mail machines and carriers just toss, throw and drop the orders through older machines. Meaning.. Media mail will screw up your book. Also with mediamail, the shipper needs to pay for thier own wrapping and protection layer. Proirty is the way to go!
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What a shame…
I took a long time to prepare my photos and make a great book.
After a few days of hard work I had a superb book IMO.
Than when I ordered I was shocked by the shipping prices. To get the book here to Brazil I would have to pay around U$91,00. That WAY too much. I’m used to buying things from Amazon, Ebay (people 2 people) and B&H Photo. An those shipping prices are around 3 to 4 times more than I’m used to pay.
I just don’t get why shipping prices have to be so ridiculously high on Blurb.
They said here that they are working hard on it, but we haven’t heard a single word from them on 2008.
I’m starting to think about using other sites, but none of them had such a good software. The book layout was just perfect here.
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I don’t know if this has been mentioned in the many previous posts but… Here in Canada UPS acts as the border agent for any items shipped here (don’t know if this is the case in other countries but I expect it is). Therefore, there are many ridiculously high special charges such as a customs fee, border agent fee, etc. These extra charges are all controlled by UPS. A better alternative (which I don’t know if you’ve looked at) would be to use the US/Canadian postal service. Yes, it might take longer to receive your order, but some of us wouldn’t mind that wait if the price was lower. A shipping cost that is more then double the price of your book (for the cheapest book) is unacceptable.
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Just to add to the consensus – the current shipping costs make producing books for sale through blurb completely uneconomic. The print costs are marginal (i.e. it’s hard to sell books for enough to cover the print costs), but attractive for very short runs for sale to niche markets. When I am having to charge a third to half the cover price for shipping – no way to make a profit. (I am in the UK) The shipping costs are breathtakingly high – you can send a small book from anywhere to anywhere in Europe in a few days for less than $2 plus maybe another dollar for an envelope. I’ve never paid more than a few dollars to have second hand books sent from Europe and the USA so why do Blurb want $8 for the "economy at your own risk" option?
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