Shipping & Handling

[Harley R. Pageot]

Scenario:

Zinester in England wants me to carry some of his new zine.  He sells them for 2 pounds each.  Three zines plus shipping comes to 11 pounds or $18.42.

 

In order for me to make my money back I'd have to sell them for $6.14 each which is astronomically high.  Nobody's going to pay that.

 

 

I'm new to distroing so what's the norm in a situation like this?  Does the zinester usually pay for the shipping themselves?

 

I want them to make money but I also don't want to lose money.

[Colin Tedford]

It varies, but in my experience the zinester usually pays the shipping. Is there a way to split the shipping with the zinester so you both can cover costs with a less-exorbitant price? Shipping might be cheaper per unit if they ship more of them in the package, so another (less-likely) option would be to find other people / distros who want the zine that you could redistribute to (though if you have to re-ship them, then it maybe doesn't work so well).

[Ivan Pope]

You need to look at why it costs so much to send. £11 postage from the UK is 880g, almost a kilo - that seems a lot for three zines, unless they are something spectacular. Ask how much they weigh and check rates here http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?catId=400036&mediaI...

[Harley R. Pageot]

£11 is the total. Three zines selling for £2 each plus £5 shipping from England to Canada.

[lizzy / marching stars distro]

UK postage is very high. (Not as high as Canada, but way higher than USA).
Buuut we do have surface mail, which does take 6-8 weeks but is ooodles cheaper. Maybe you consider that?
With my distro, I sometimes pay all postage, I sometimes split postage and sometimes the zinester pays all. I just make sure that I'm never selling at a loss.
This does sound like a pretty mammoth zine though? £2 wholesale and £5 postage for 3?

[Erica S.]

The zinester pays the postage. Sometimes as a distro owner, I'll throw in an extra buck or two for shipping (usually rounding up to a nice round number), but the cost of mailing the zine should be in the zine itself, and that goes for costs related to shipping to distros as well as the cost of shipping to individual readers.

The $2 he's charging... is that his retail price or his wholesale price? Because again, it's common to charge a smaller rate for distros (50/50 or 60/40) but you don't want to sell it for more than his own retail price.

Also, 3 is kind of a small amount for stocking, maybe he doesn't want to deal with such a small amount WRT international shipping/special wholesale rates/etc.

[lizzy / marching stars distro]

Erica S. said:

The zinester pays the postage. Sometimes as a distro owner, I'll throw in an extra buck or two for shipping (usually rounding up to a nice round number), but the cost of mailing the zine should be in the zine itself, and that goes for costs related to shipping to distros as well as the cost of shipping to individual readers.

The $2 he's charging... is that his retail price or his wholesale price? Because again, it's common to charge a smaller rate for distros (50/50 or 60/40) but you don't want to sell it for more than his own retail price.

Also, 3 is kind of a small amount for stocking, maybe he doesn't want to deal with such a small amount WRT international shipping/special wholesale rates/etc.

There's more than one way of doing things... things often have to get more flexible for international postage...
I've run an 'international' distro for over 3 years, I regularly contribute to or pay all of postage, and I'm not running my distro at a loss. A number of your points/observations are valid and important but I don't think it's useful to talk about how things "should" be done.