Book Size Matters

Yesterday, I packed two boxes of Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams to mail to the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference.

I packed the books in the flat rate priority boxes from the U.S. Post Office. The mail clerks could see the boxes were heavy.

"Let's see how much it would have cost without the flat rate," one of them eagerly said. They were curious. Without the flat rate, each box would have cost over $33 in postage. Because of the flat rate, each box was $10.35 to be shipped priority mail anywhere in the United States. I saved over $23 a box on shipping those books.

The size of your book makes a big difference for this shipping process. As a publisher, I am guiding authors in the creation of their books. One of the standard book sizes is 8.5 x 5.5 in either a hardcover or paperback. Another standard book size is 9 x 6. If I have a choice, each time I will select 8.5 x 5.5.

Why?

A 8.5 x 5.5 book will pack perfectly in the free boxes from the U.S. Post Office. For my Jumpstart Your Publishing Dreams, I can pack 16 books into each box or two stacks of eight books. The books are tightly packed into each box so that if they are thrown around in the shipping process, each book will arrive in pristine and perfect shape.

As marketing guru Seth Godin has said, "Marketing begins before the product is created." It takes some planning and intentional design to make sure your finished book is the right size, but that planning will result in repeated savings for you.