First off, let me say — if you're self-publishing, going digital-only saves so much stress and work. However, I just couldn't resist creating a physical book. I mean, look at this:

Check out that sexy spot gloss.

Having a physical book makes in-person promotion easier too. "Oh yeah, I wrote this book, you should check it out," doesn't hold a candle to pulling the book out of your jacket for people to ooh and ahh over in person. Not to mention that some people prefer to read from printed materials rather than from screens. I touched upon how I got Hello Web App printed in my last article — essentially, I am a huge fan of PrintNinja and you should use them too for your printing needs. Their quality is top-notch and their support is fantastic. So, you're like me, self-publishing a book, and you order 1,000 books from your printer. They arrive at your door. You have orders in your inbox. Now what?

I worried a lot about making sure the book was protected without spending an arm and leg on packaging supplies. The packaging needed to be fairly light too, since added weight meant more expensive postage. Version one Originally, my books were wrapped in a gallon storage bag (the twist tie wasn't used, the open end was just wrapped around the book), then wrapped in a sheet of bubble wrap (this roll has perforated sheets, a big time saver, and the bubble wrap is then taped securely around the book with special attention paid to the corners), then stuffed in a poly mailer.

The biggest issue with this is the packages are still semi-pliable. An overly enthusiastic postal worker could bend the book in half if he or she really wanted to. A dropped book could get bent corners. Thankfully, I've never received a complaint, but it was a constant worry. A good three hundred or so books were shipped out this way. Version two Thankfully I discovered that Amazon sells cardboard mailers that wrap well around paperback books. The books still get the gallon bag + bubble wrap treatment (which hopefully makes the packages waterproof as well), then they're wrapped and taped in the cardboard mailer. The books don't move, they still have bubble wrap padding, and they have corner protection as well.

Hiring an assistant for packaging Sometimes I make silly decisions, like deciding to live abroad for the summer immediately after my book launch. I'm currently writing this from Budapest!

Right now, I create and send over the labels for the week on Thursday, she ships on Friday or Saturday, and I pay using Venmo on Sunday. Label creation This turned into the worst part about shipping books. First off, if you're shipping books in the US, did you know about Media Mail? It is a significantly cheaper postage rate reserved for books and educational materials. There are a few additional rules involved — for example, you can't include anything else in the package, like a thank you card. Make sure to read up on the rules before you use it. If you're shipping books though, it's the way to go (domestically, at least). One last product shoutout — all labels were printed onto fancy label sticker paper (separate papers exist for laser vs. inkjet, both linked are ones I've used and recommend). I could have saved money by printing on plain paper and taping but the time involved did not seem worth the cost savings. Making labels the hard way I needed to find a way to create labels automagically from CSVs downloaded from Kickstarter and Gumroad. You can create labels from a CSV on USPS.com, but you can't create media mail labels. Unfortunately, the only service online that takes a CSV to create media mail labels is through Paypal. I could still use USPS for international labels, however. The original shipment of three hundred or so books was created using these two services. It was terrible. I would take my CSV, and split it into two depending on whether it was domestic or international. Each service had its own nitpicky requirements for the CSV, so each CSV had to be formatted correctly. Of course, with Paypal, would still throw errors about half the time.

It's like something out of 1998.

I would feed the CSV into Paypal, where I could at least generate all the labels at once. However, about 50% of the time I would forget to choose the tiny drop down to set the correct shipping date for the books, as I was creating the labels early (you need to ship within 24 hours of the data specified on the label, and it would default for that day). Refunds for labels with incorrect dates would take 3-4 weeks and I was warned that it was up to USPS to decide whether to refund or not. Once I got the labels, they would be formatted with one label per sheet, so I would stop printing halfway through to rotate the paper so I didn't waste half of my fancy label paper. Oh, and Paypal would ask me to use a "modern browser" and wouldn't let me use Chrome. Of course.

This is just the first page of the three page process I would go through for every single international label.