angiescarr

I know some of you are authors. :-)
Does anyone sell their books direct and post from Spain? I may have asked this before but How do you access the special 'book rate' for posting around the world. It's a very good rate but we never get it because Correos don't train my local office staff to use it. Now it's become urgent that I find out. Not doing so could cost me and my customers a lot of money we don't have.

HBG

I can only suggest converting your books into ebooks and selling them that way. Most sales nowadays are done that way.

angiescarr

I do have an ebook of old work for a younger readership but
since this one is about colour, and also a large proportion of readers are older if not elderly, It's doubly important that it's printed. It's crazy! We can see that this price exists on the Correos site but nobody can tell us how to get it!

spainrico

Assuming the book is self published I thought the publishers/printers like Amazon, authorhouse, Lulu etc fulfilled the order?

But to answer your question I would request to speak with the Correos manager and ask him/her to resolve the issue or travel to a larger more organised office.

angiescarr

Self published. That means the publisher is me. The distributor is me. etc etc.
We live in the pueblo and even the local town is a bit small town. Yesterday I gave up and rang Correos where I was attended by an "English speaker." Pah!
It seems I have to be registered fully as a publisher distributor to access this price. More paperwork, more taxes... worth it. Maybe, I'll have to find this out. and maybe wait 'till I've sold enough to pay any paperwork fees. Spain's losing out though because I have to have the larger proportion of the books printed in the UK so we can post from there! I'd rather use Spanish printers as they're cheaper but not cheaper enough to cover the hike in postage charges. It seems in this country if you got nothing... it doesn't matter how hard you work...you get nothing.

spainrico

Being self published does not have to mean fulfillling the orders yourself, although it can be an option.

So you have paid to have them printed in the UK and then shipped to Spain for you to ship on to customers who if UK based the book is returning to the UK.

I understand it can be complicated to calculate the best options but most authors these days instead of having loads printed and hope to sell them opt for the print on demand option and let the printer fulfill the order. Yes obviously this has a cost overhead for the service.

I know several self published writers who have opted for POD option so as not to have their garage full of unsold books.

Fortunately as my book was text only the ebook option was perfect.

angiescarr

I've also found a printer in Spain (much cheaper) . But no, I'm posting mostly from the UK via a friend because of the seriously high postage costs from here. I'm also using POD. But at reasonable numbers to avoid very high costs. So maybe in the future, if anything I'll be printing in Spain and shipping to the UK to post. Crazy eh?

Alcalaina

Not so crazy really. I used to work for a publisher in the UK and they used printers in India. The stock was sent to Singapore and despatched from there to customers back in the UK.

Over here, we've used Lightning Source for POD and stock is fulfilled worldwide by Amazon. The correos charges are ridiculous. Have you looked into couriers like MRW or DHL?

angiescarr

Yeah we need to look at couriers again for batch posting. I have no experience in this area because my past books were through a publisher. They print in China.

angiescarr

An update on this one.
Apparently you have to be 'de alta' as a book seller and apply for a card to take to the Correos each time you post. It's taken me months to reach this and meanwhile I've had to print in, and post from The UK to bring postage charges down. Hopefully we'll get my husband signed up for this one as I'm having to give up working for a few months. Oh The person who offered advice about "fulfilled by Amazon". My husband will be trying that too. Thanks for that.

Rosemary

So glad that you have succeeded, so stupid that it was such hard work.

Rosemary

Madridboy

It's much cheaper to print in Spain....I know this as I'm a printer and remember when the yellow pages for UK were printed in Barcelona. Have you looked at private couriers for postage?

angiescarr

Hi Madridboy. Thanks. We've looked at some couriers but this is a small book and we obviously haven't found any couriers who are cheaper than postage. If you know who is cheapest for boxes of books we'd be interested to know though. But we aren't a big enough company to put a lot of work their way and we live out in a village making pick ups probably expensive?