TLDR; Our customers can now choose between a variety of shipping options, should they choose to spend extra on getting their orders as fast as humanly possible and dispensing with the standard wait times associated with less-costly shipping and handling prices.
As any of our customers who have been with us for any amount of time at all have doubtless noted, we're still working on refining and perfecting our Shipping and Handling process. To keep things cost-effective for our reader base, we've been offering for some time now, flat rate shipping. We started out at $5 for domestic orders and $10 for international orders, with a blanket policy of eating the difference any time our actual cost fluctuated to a higher price than that. Due to a dramatic increase in shipping rates industry-wide, we recently had to increase the rate to $10 for domestic, and $20 for international orders. These rates were based on the rates our publisher consistently gives us when we print on demand, and ship out the orders to our customers. We would always opt for the most inexpensive option to make this happen. It has increasingly come to our attention though, that the drawback of this lowest rate offered, is that more often than not, this option is not trackable or insurable. In spite of a guaranteed longer wait time, this is typically not a huge deal for domestic orders, and 99/100 times, the order completes its transit without issue. This can be rather problematic indeed for international orders however, and so our team quickly resolved to come up with a solution that still enables us to deliver on that flat rate shipping rate that we promise, while giving our customers the choice of how they would like their books delivered to them. The end result is that when you go to checkout, the shipping option will default to that lowest rate, but you can now click a dropdown menu and choose from other shipping options. The first option beyond economy shipping offers the basic tracking services everyone wants, but options beyond that go up in price rather quickly. Many of you will in all likelihood find these options too cost-prohibitive, but we thought that it couldn't hurt to place the decision of whether or not this is ultimately worthwhile for you in your hands. Regarding the price structure, one might be able to shop around online, and find a variety of services and shipping rates, and wonder why our rates listed are such as they are. The reason is simply that because our printer is a POD (print-on-demand) service and when we place an order we are limited to whatever options they offer us. Consequently, our prices reflect theirs—and it would seem that they are a big enough company to where they are apparently uninterested in what actually constitutes a competitive price.
We do small print runs whenever we can, so that we can fulfill some orders using third party shipping services that offer better rates on better shipping options, but due to our modest operational budget, said print runs are small, as is our shipping center. Consequently, so we can only stock so many books at once. So when we're out, we're out until a new shipment arrives.
As Pierre Bernard would say, "bottom line America:" We are still offering flat rates for domestic and international orders of $10 and $20. However what you have been/are getting with this are economy shipping options that are very lackluster in regard to their tracking, insurance, etc. We believe our supporters deserve the very best, and in an effort to offer just that, we have added more shipping options, giving our customers the full range of available shipping quotes offered to us by our printer for you to choose from at your discretion. Meaning it is not possible to get your orders much faster, but at decidedly higher rates, that you will ultimately have to decide for yourself whether or not they are worth it to you.
As always though, depending on what country you are in, it may be more viable for you to order our digital editions. While we do ship worldwide, there is a handful of countries that we are either unable to ship to, or to which shipping books is both expensive and risky.
Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, and thank you for your support!
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