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AVOIDING GOING TO THE POST OFFICE
Hi everybody - I've been on BookMooch for some time and, as I get older and more reluctant to keep going to the post office (especially in the Minnesota winter) and USPS gets more restrictive about what they will accept as mail with stamps on it (currently the envelope has to weigh less than 10 oz and be less than 1/2 inch thick), I found myself listing fewer and fewer books. Then on a LibraryThing forum I found a site called "Pirate Ship". On this site you can enter the sender and destination name and address and the type of postage you want (you can specify Media Mail), the site will generate a USPS mailing label with a tracking number that you can print and put on the envelope, and the charge is the same as if you took it to the Post Office (no monthly fees, no per-label charge). I thought it was too good to be true so I tried it a few times and it has always worked. My mail carrier is willing to pick up the envelopes/packages, I can follow with the tracking number on the USPS website, and I can send multiple books and books that don't meet the qualifications for mail with stamps. If you want to avoid the trip to the post office, I recommend that you try it--I'm sure you'll like it as much as I do.
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Miriam
3 years ago
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Arlene - Then try Pirate Ship, and I hope you like it as much as I do. - Miriam
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Cherry - it's really quite simple. You go to the PirateShip site and open an account. You have to load some money onto it using a credit card. Then every time you need to mail a book, you fill out the form, telling it the package qualifies for Media Mail, and it gives you a standard Post Office package label to print out and deducts the amount from what you have loaded on your account. You can specify a mailing date, and I gather the Post Office doesn't like it to be more than 4 or 5 days later than when you print the label. The site has some good informative explanations and their Chat is very helpful. I just leave the packages for my mailwoman to pick up along with my other outgoing mail, but you might have to negotiate that with your carrier. Take a look at the PirateShip site.
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Today is digital detox day - delete redundant websites, mailing lists and remove bookmooch fora that you do not use. THIS forum seems quite active, but it touches a reason why many of us are not mooching so much. The cost of postage has gone up and media mail has been quite restrictive. How can we find and make alternatives to get us mooching again? Partly this is only USA focused, and I am not in the USA. But some is also an international aspect. There are many books I would mooch from the USA - but I cannot as the holder won't mooch outside their country - and several have said they will send but balked when they see the postal costs!!! ARE there some alteratives? How can we be more creative to get the books circulating? RIght now in a pandemic we are not flying so much - but outside of that is there a way the those that do travel internatiionally might act rather like the Angels did and take books abroad and post them? How might that work - points donations? Some kind of BookMooch bonus? Are there some ways we can take advantage of those in forces bases around the world that can send internationally at domestic rates? Or community library rates? Is there a way we can bulk send via slower shipping? I do not know but any thoughts are good!
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Marcus - I don't know what the answer is to the international postage problem. Once upon a time there was an international book rate, and I used to send books overseas from the U.S. routinely. First the international book rate disappeared, and then the package rates started going up. I recently discovered that the Pirate Ship site, which I've referenced previously and which I now use for sending all books (no Post Office runs!) has an international shipping program which looks cheaper than the regular U.S. Post Office rates and might still be within reasonable limits (considering 3 points for an international mooch), even though I would often have to ask people to mooch 2 books to make it work. I believe people have asked that the BookMooch points for an international mooch be raised and nothing has happened. As to the forums, I think there may be less interest in book-swapping in general since Amazon has provided a way to get money for used books and also to reach a much wider customer base. BookMooch is also suffering from the inability to access Amazon US to list books.
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