3 ms·
The economics of books were always weird. $15 for a new paperback that you can barely even give away when you’re done reading it, so it costs more than the book
by hombre_fatal 4y ago
The economics of books were always weird. $15 for a new paperback that you can barely even give away when you’re done reading it, so it costs more than the book is even worth to most people to send it in the mail.
It makes it hard to get old books to the people who want them.
- hippich 4y agoNot to take away from anything you said, but in case someone didn't know, USPS offers shipping for "media" (dvd, books, cds, etc) which is often cheaper - https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-Media-Mail-Book-Rate https://faq.usps.com/s/article/What-is-Media-Mail-Book-Rate
- dehrmann 4y agoThat's part of why they picked $15. It discourages used sales.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoIt's probably been a decade since I last used them but there were two book swapping services, I used to belong to that would handle matchmaking of people who had books the other wanted and then you could print a shipping label at home if you had a printer (they were still common at the time). For small paperbacks, you could even print out the postal details on a regular sheet of paper and then wrap it around the book and tape it up, ready to be picked up by the post office. Using the media mail rate kept things reasonable, especially for standard size books.