Amazon Tutorial - Shipping Books

I have been reselling my used books on Amazon for more than 2 years and would now like to make a tutorial to pass on my experiences, mistakes, and knowledge to others who would like to sell on Amazon, cheaply of course. Just to be safe: Warning - The writer does not take responsibility for any injuries or losses incurred by following this tutorial.

You might ask yourself, "Why?"


How To Package Cheaply

Here you will learn how to reuse boxes, newspaper, cardboard and paper bags to package a book.

Boxes
Using an old box lying around is the easiest way to ship a book. Once you find a box that fits your book you need padding to protect the book from movement inside the box. If the box doesn't perfectly fit your book you can use crumpled newspaper/paper or crumpled plastic bags lying around the flat.
Wrap crumpled paper or bags around the corners of the book and on the bottom of the box for the book to rest on and the top of the book.

Cardboard
The second best solution is to create your own packaging out of a single piece of cardboard.

What you need is a piece of cardboard that is about 2 1/2 times longer than the book, and about 1 1/2 times taller. The size of the cardboard can vary depending on the thickness of your book.

Another thing to keep in mind is to use corrugated fiberboard. I found that regular cardboard (without that extra layer in between the flat sides) isn't reliable enough to protect the book.

Take your book and place the spine roughly in the middle of the cardboard. Next fold the cardboard over the book and tape the two meeting sides of the cardboard together. Afterwords use tape to close off the remaining two gaps between the cardboard. How much tape is needed? It is a good idea to have a layer of tape holding down the cardboard then put another layer on top of the tape running perpendicular to the first layer.

Paper Bag
The third way is to use paper bags to wrap your book. This is a method introduced to me by a post office worker when I first started shipping books. In retrospect I think this method is pretty crappy but it's effective if you cannot or will use the two methods above. You take paper bags, uncut, and tape them together to form a sort of gift wrapping paper that is about 2 times larger than the book. The key here is to use the paper bag's layers to form rigid corners to protect the book. To do this you simply wrap the book like a gift (if you don't know how to do this you can look it up on your favorite search engine.

Always print out the order slip. There is a piece of the slip with the recipient's address to be put as the mailing address on the front of the package. I recently had a problem with the post office misreading my hand writing (4 -> 9) and put on the wrong postage. So the lesson from this section, always print the address slip.


Shipping Rates
The following applies to media mail.

Weight (Pounds) 1 2 3 4 5 6

Price (USD) $2.38 $2.77 $3.16 $3.55 $3.94 $4.33

More prices at :http://www.usps.com/prices/media-mail-prices.htm

Compare this to the flat rate priority mail boxes:

$4.95 for a box that fits things the size of DVDs
$10.35 for a box that fits things the size of binders and most books.


Insurance and Delivery Confirmation
Buying insurance and having delivery confirmation for your package is extremely important. I have learned my lesson trying to save a few dollars here and there on deliveries by not buying insurance or delivery confirmation, only to be burned on one lousy sale.

Through an A-Z claim a buyer claimed he had not receive the book and there was no way to check if he really did or didn't. I had to refund his money because I didn't have delivery confirmation. I don't have the book and I lost money on shipping. The only exceptions I can see is if the item is extremely inexpensive then probably only getting delivery confirmation is good enough.

The rates for insurance pulled from the USPS website:

Insurance:
• Provides:
• Insurance against loss or damage of your package, up to the maximum of the item's value or the insurance purchased.


Cost:
• $1.35 for up to $50 in value.
• $2.30 for $50.01 to $100
• Note: Add an additional $1.50 for every $100 dollars of insurance after $100 (to a maximum of $5,000)

Revival of the Offensivelooking Blog

I haven't published a new posting in almost five months. I have been focusing my attention on other things, but the main problem was that I couldn't think of any random/interesting projects or activities to do. Recently some activities/projects have sparked my want to post these doings online. So I've brought myself out of retirement, again, and hopefully I can bring some original content to the InternetS.

The focus of this blog will now narrow to several activities that are close to me. Alongside the random what nots of my life I will start to add my cooking activities and post projects with instructions.

Barbecue

I recently streamed my situation of being burned out from school. I had a lot of frustration with not being able to do some of the fun dumb things I wanted to do, but this has been slowly changing.
Near the end of February I thought of an improvised grill.


Me and my roommates occasionally talk about doing things, but the follow-through was almost never there. I am especially bad at talking the talk and not walking the walk. This was different, it was doable.
We needed a kick start. All we had was the idea of rotating meat skewed on a stick. But luckily for us we have cable. Me and my roommates were watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations and would you believe it, he was in Greece roasting lamb on a spit held up by cinder blocks. Walla! All we needed were a few cement blocks to prop up a stick from which we would skewer our meat slices and we would have a rotating spit. After the excitement died down we realized that method couldn't be done. We didn't have a long enough stick or metal pole.
So the next obvious option was thought up, prop an oven rack up with cement blocks. We gathered up our remaining charcoal, lighter fluid, diesel, found some cement blocks and bricks, and bought some inexpensive cuts of meat.


I tried to skewer several slabs of beef and pork ala churrasco (Brazilian barbecue) style grilling. This resulted in us eating half raw, half well done beef and some moist, grill flavored pork. A few steaks and some chicken quarters were also thrown on the grill. The chicken quarters were way too big to cook thoroughly, so next time I'm going to just use legs.



The evening was pretty laid back. We had rice and sauerkraut to accompany the barbecue. After dinner my roommates busted out their banjo and violin and they had some duel of the banjos and some improvisation going.



After such a fun night there is a plan to do another barbecue. The plan now is to make a grill two times as large, raise the grill up a couple inches, and make a dome cover to smoke the meat.

Broken down, but not unfixable (unedited 5am post)

All I can say is that I am recovering from a broken spirit. Broken from Fall quarter here at UC Davis. I've had a hard time motivating myself to do homework at a reasonable time, and I've skipped more class this quarter than I've skipped my entire time at Davis. But I am going to graduate after summer school, and my hope for good grades has sent me into damage control time. What can a guy who didn't do much besides school, and still failed GPA-wise, do to find a job in this economy?
My sights have turned away from school for some time now, I think ever since the summer of '08. My ideas of making money require a discipline I don't have at this moment because of my school work. I am trying to start up a website design business aimed at small businesses. The overhead in terms of money is very small, but the investment in time is the problem. There are several technologies I need to learn since I've built extremely amateur websites in high school. My current Photoshop skills couldn't fake a blurry Bigfoot photo. I've drawn up the first test candidate, my parent's restaurant (PLUG: The Ricebowl Hanford, CA, go eat there). This website and a couple other sites I have,to various degrees, drawn up and planned will form the portfolio of the startup. I can't do this alone though. There have been several attempts at getting a project started by myself and they have failed. I will call upon my roommates to join this endeavor and hope for something good.
This startup idea had me so overjoyed. I want that independent spirit of an entrepreneur, being my own boss, and doing my own thing. Maybe it's the 4 years of monotonous college work that's amplifying my excitement, but I don't care. If this project fails, then it's no big deal, all I'd have to exclaim is, "grad school here I come!"
I don't want to think this will fail, but I'm a realistic guy and I know that there is a better chance of the U.S. annexing Mexico than this startup being successful. But hey, there's a probability for everything, no matter how small. That is why I try. So, during the spring and spring quarter I must, for the sake of trying to start something worthwhile, learn new web tech., learn art, and most importantly rallying people behind me. Even in failure it's all about the follow through.