Author Archive
I am constantly happy with my decision to get an account with Stamps.com. It started with their special offer of free postage, supplies and a digital scale.
I enjoyed using the free postage. I’m also pleased to be able to track packages that I send out via Stamps.com. It is reassuring to be able to see where the shipment is & that it has been successfully delivered.
I sent out a couple of books today, and I messed up the postage. I had a sheet of 6 postage/mailing labels & without thinking which label I should print on, I clicked “print”. Wouldn’t you know it, the postage was printed in an area I had already used the label from. So the $2.38 worth of postage was ‘lost’.
Thankfully, I was able to print out a form that Stamps.com even completed about the messed up postage. All I had to do was sign that the information was correct, add the sheet showing the postage printed on the backing paper instead of a label, and mail it off.
Stamps.com people will review it & then post a credit for that amount to my account. It was easy to take care of. Again, I am very happy I print postage from my pc @ any time with Stamps.com
I just received an email from PaperBackSwap.com about a book I ordered over a month ago. Since I have not marked that I received the book, I have received a credit added to my account.
I didn’t have to do anything, the system realized it was over 26 days past the order date & determined the book was lost in the mail. I am nicely surprised.
So often, now a days, you have to watch out that things happen as they are supposed to … It is nice to not have to mess with keeping up with all the books I have ordered.
I have made the commitment to myself that ASAP after receiving a book, I go online to the site & mark it recieved so that the person sending the book gets their credit quickly.
PBS has definitely been set up the right way to make it a good experience for members!
On the PaperBackSwap site, you can search by author or title for specific books. If you search by author, it will bring up a detailed listing of all their books on the site, including a picture of the cover of the book.
When you click on the description of a book, the author’s name is a link to a list of the titles & publishing year of all their works. The books located on the site are in green while the books not available are in red. If you are looking for a specific book, or have an idea of the title, it is easy to find that book quickly.
There are 2 different ways to save money buying books @ Amazon.com. The first way is to find used copies of books. When you go to a book you want, look slightly lower on the description page for “# new & # used”
ie: “21 new from $1.79; 42 used from $0.97”
You can save quite a lot this way. One thing you have to take into consideration is that each book has $3.99 shipping for each book.
So = $1.79 + $3.99 shipping => $5.79 [so = well below retail of $ 7.99]
Sometimes the good / new copies are more than $ 3 each – then the cost is not less than retail.
The second way to save from Amazon is to buy at least $ 25 worth of books straight from Amazon.
On the description page it shows: Price: $x & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. The Super saver free shipping is the slowest, but it is free if you purchase at least $25.
Many times you can find books which qualify for buy 3 & get the 4th free.
ie “This item is eligible for our 4-for-3 promotion. Eligible products include select Books, Single Copy Magazines, and Home & Garden items. Buy any 4 eligible items and get the lowest-priced item free.”
I often am able to use the free super saver shipping as well as buy 4 for 3 promotion. This really saves money!
I shipped out 4 books the other day. Just now I logged onto PaperBackSwap.com & noticed I had 4 credits I could use for books.
I went to my Reminder List and quickly selected a book. I then chose to look through the other books that that member had listed and found 3 other books I wanted to get.
Getting multiple books from a member saves me time in picking them out, and saves the member postage as you can ship multiple books out for less money than you could ship them separately.
I love being able to ship off books from home & not having to go to the Post Office. It makes my life so much easier!
I was concerned when I saw a notice on a postal drop box that packages over 13 ounces had to be accepted by a postal worker in the Post Office, not dropped into a mail box.
I told a Post Office Supervisor that I shipped using Stamps.com, and asked if that rule applied to my packages. He said “No. Your packages are tracked via Stamps.com with your information listed & recorded. You can put them in your mailbox or a drop box without concern.”
Another reason why I love using Stamps.com to print my postage on my home pc & printer!
I’m excited. I found a tough, durable, waterproof mailer that will speed up my processing of books I send out.
I have been pleased with recycling the poly bags that I recieve when I order from online clothing sites into book mailers. One drawback is that it is a bit labor intensive to cut the bag down to the correct size and tape it shut.
The other concern is that of supply. I don’t always have a bag to use. I sometimes have padded mailers I received books in, but often times I don’t. PaperBackSwap.com does have directions to use paper printed in the pc printer to wrap the book, but it takes even more time and is not waterproof.
I searched online and came up with a couple of great, low cost options. I like having a self sealing pouch on hand that cost less than $ 0.08 – $ 0.30 each. I immediately ordered them. Check it out:
I just saw that I have 4 books to mail to 1 person at PaperBackSwap.com. At first I was flustered, as I am rushed today & didn’t see how I could add going to the post office to my errands list.
I’m so glad I have the account with Stamps.com. I realized that I don’t have to leave to mail the books! I plopped the books in a small box, went to stamps.com, clicked ‘media mail’ and filled in the information.
It was a snap! Time & again being able to print postage with my pc has been a lifesaver for me.
I am excited to get the Amazon Kindle digital reader! It will be fabulous to have multiple books at hand on my upcoming cruise. Another bonus is that it is conserving resources since I won’t be buying so many printed books.
I am all about instant gratification! It was fun to realize that I can pick out new titles & have them downloaded in less than 60 seconds & I don’t have to be tied to my pc to do it. Just last night I unexpectedly finished my book at work & didn’t have another one to start reading… that won’t happen with Kindle. I could hold over one thousand books on it if I wanted!
I was worried that I would run out of battery too soon, but you can read your Kindle for days between charging. It even has a ‘read to me’ feature where it will read the material out loud. Now, if my eyes get too blurry to read (drag about getting older) I can rest them and still enjoy the story.
In order to speed up the process of filing the book orders, I utilize a screen capture program to take a picture of the part of the screen I want to use & copy it to a MS Word document.
On PaperBackSwap.com, I go to the tab “books to mail out”, select the book to process, confirm that I have the book & can send it out within 2 days. I then select: ‘print label’ for that book & open the PDF which has the name & address of the person ordering the book on it.
I copy/paste the return address as well as the destination address to a MS Word document, then reduce the size of the information & print it onto a portion of a full sheet label. This then my mailing label.
[See the videos of this process.]
I either place the book in a padded mailer or recycle the Tuff Shield type of impervious plastic bag that online clothing catalogs send their orders out in. I can usually get at least 4 books wrapped in one of those bags. Many times I am able to peal off the label of the mailer which I recieved a book in & reuse the mailer.
You can get your postage on the site, but I have found a less expensive way. You can get an account with Stamps.com and print your postage from your home computer. Click on my link to obtain their Special Offer. It includes up to $25 of postage, $5 supplies and a 5 pound digital postal scale. Click here to check it out.
When you sign up and get the free postage, you can mail out several books before you have to buy your own postage.
Printing postage is easy to do using Stamps.com. No matter what time of day, I can pack the book, determine it’s weight and affix postage right from my pc! I don’t have to waste time & money going to the post office. Also, electronic delivery confirmation is less expensive through Stamps.com. Many of the types of postage are discounted over the post office’s rates.
I looked into getting a postage meter, but found out that the ink for a postage meter is 100 times more expensive than any PC printer’s ink!
I like that most regular paperback books only cost around $1.50 – $3.00 to mail. That’s definitely cheaper than paying $7.99 a book at the store.
The site has a ‘reminder list’ that you can add books you want to read to. I like how I can click/search the author’s name and find books they’ve written. Many times I like different books by the same author. I can select those I want to read and add them to my Reminder List. Then when I have credits available, I don’t have to spend time searching for a book to select, I can just go to my Reminder List & pick one I’ve already selected to read.
I’ve come across books at garage sales and offered $5-10 for a huge amount of books (especially when they are ready to close down their sale). I then post the books up on PBSwap to trade. Right now I have 249 books listed on the site. Every few days I find book requests to fill/send out in my account. I’ve developed a system to fill those requests which saves me time, paper & money.
I am a book-a-holic! I love to read. I always have a book with me to ready when I get a spare moment. I primarily read romance, but also enjoy suspense and fantasy.
I was spending $40 - $60 every couple of weeks on books at Barnes & Noble & Amazon. I make good money, but that is quite a lot to drop on books. I would even run out of books to read & have to re-read favorite series (which I enjoy as long as it has been a while since I’ve read it.).
I was searching online for a copy of a book by a favorite author… I found a copy of it listed at a website called ‘PaperBackSwap.com’. I went to the site and was amazed to realize that it was a book trading site.
I looked at the membership information and was even more surprised that there were not any mandatory fees involved in the process!
If Jane has listed a book & I want to get it, I can select it… she will then mail it to me. When I mark that I’ve received it, she will get a credit. She can then use the credit to select a book for herself. The person who has listed that book will mail her the book & then receive a credit.
It’s a great system! I only pay for the postage of the books which I send out.
There is even the ability to purchase credits in-case I want to get a book but I don’t have any credits saved up.
