Holding stock, and shipping it yourself
Selling direct, or standing behind a table at an event, means owning books rather than files. Nobody mentions that it is a different job until the boxes are in the hallway.
Books are heavy, they absorb water out of the air, and they are damaged by handling that would not mark anything else you own. A warped or sun-bleached copy is not a slightly worse book. It is one you cannot sell, cannot sign for anyone and cannot send to a shop: money already spent and not coming back.
Paper moves with the room
Paper is hygroscopic: it takes moisture from humid air and gives it back to dry air, swelling and shrinking as it goes. A cover is laminated board glued to a text block, and the layers do not move at the same rate, which is why a book left in a changeable room curls at the fore edge.
Stability matters more than any single condition: a cool, dry room that stays that way treats books better than a warm one that swings.
- Store them flat, in the boxes they arrived in. Those boxes are sized for that book and hold the stack square. Books left standing upright for months lean, and the lean sets.
- Get them off a concrete floor. A slab wicks damp upward through cardboard. A shelf, a pallet or a plastic crate is enough.
- Keep them out of direct sunlight. Covers fade fast in a sunny room, and the spine is the one thing a browsing reader sees.
- Not the garage, the loft, or beside a radiator. Unheated spaces cycle through condensation every night; a radiator dries one side of a stack and not the other.
- Do not stack boxes to the ceiling. The bottom box carries everything above it, and crushed spines start there.
Sell the oldest copies first, and keep one pristine copy of each printing where nothing is stacked on it. Ordering author copies covers the checks to run the moment a box arrives.
In the tools. Previews are free, unlimited and watermarked, so you can read the whole interior and see the full wrap at printed size before you commit to a quantity — the cheapest moment to find a problem, rather than after forty copies are stacked in the hallway. Start your book → · about the tools
Packing: a bumped corner is a refund
A book in a plain envelope arrives with rounded corners and a crease. That costs you the copy, the postage and the reader's goodwill, and you will almost always replace it.
- Padded mailers or book wraps. A book wrap is stiff card that folds around the book and grips the corners. It is the standard for a reason.
- A rigid wrap for hardcovers. Hard corners concentrate every impact, and a dust jacket scuffs on anything it slides against.
- Fill the space. A book that can move inside its packaging will move for the whole journey.
- Tape the seams, not the book. Never tape directly to a cover; the laminate lifts when the reader opens it.
Buy packaging in quantity, and post one test parcel to yourself. It is the only way to find out what your packing survives.
Postage bands decide what you can charge
Carriers price by weight and thickness, in bands, and one paperback usually falls in a cheap band while two fall out of it. That single step is often the difference between a direct sale that makes sense and one that does not.
Work it out with real objects: pack a parcel as you would send it, weigh and measure it, price it at your carrier's current rates, then do the same for two and three copies. A flat rate set optimistically becomes a discount you pay on every multi-book order.
Where the time actually goes
Packing a book takes a minute. The afternoon goes on the rest: reading addresses, printing labels, matching orders to parcels, and queuing at a counter.
That is why batching works. Pick two fixed posting days a week, say so at the point of sale, and do every order in one sitting. The one situation that hands you a few hundred parcels at once, with no way to spread them, is a funded edition with rewards to fulfill: Crowdfunding a book counts that cost in before you take the money. Buying postage online and printing labels at home removes the queue, usually the largest single block of time.
It is also why fulfillment services exist: you send them stock, they pick and post, and you lose margin and the ability to sign anything. Selling books directly to readers weighs that trade properly.
Keep a record you can search
A lost parcel is a conversation you cannot have from memory. Log every order — what went out, to whom, on what date, by what service, with the tracking number. A spreadsheet is enough. Note replacements separately so you know what breakage costs you, and keep a running count of stock on hand: that is the number that tells you when to reorder, and the next box has to be printed before it can ship. The records a self-publisher needs to keep covers the wider set.
International is not the same promise
Sending a book abroad means a customs declaration on the parcel, and duties that may be collected from the reader on delivery. Thresholds, forms and who pays vary by country and change, so check your carrier's current requirements for the destinations you mean to serve. A single worldwide flat rate is a promise you can lose money on: price by zone, or say plainly which countries you ship to. Printing in more than one country is the other answer — print near the reader instead of posting to them.
Most authors end up doing this narrowly
The common conclusion, after running it for a while, is that shipping stock yourself is worth it for signed copies, for events and markets, and for readers who specifically want a book from the author — and that everything else is better left to the stores, which already have the staff and the postal contracts. That is not a failure. It is the right answer for a business whose one employee is meant to be writing the next book.
Make your book
The tools are free to use: name your book, bring your manuscript or your artwork, and work as long as you like. You only pay when you want the files without the preview watermark.
Next: Selling books at markets, fairs and conventions · More: Ordering author copies · Selling books directly to readers · Events, signings and selling books in person