PayPal Shipping Labels
By Zac Smith
Editor, Back Patio Press
Adapted from twitter thread. By adapted we mean Zac sent us the whole thread in an email and now here it is unedited.
i see a lot of people making the act of shipping books needlessly hard on themselves and i can help 1/x
i just printed and shipped ~40 copies of a book i cowrote with giacomo pope. before this, I'd shipped a few books one at a time. now here is my current, efficient method: 2/x
buy some cheap bubble mailers off the internet. like $15 for 50 mailers. they have little peel-away strips to seal them. our book was 4.5"x6.5" so i used 6x9 mailers. roomy but still sleek. could fit extra prizes in there too. 3/x
put your book in a mailer and weigh it on a coffee or drug scale, in ounces. a digital scale costs less than $10 online. i use one for coffee. our book in the mailer was 7.2oz. 4/x
here's the really useful bit. here’s a link to print a shipping label from paypal. it's free, i mean, you just pay for the postage. you can do it through usps or ups, domestic or international. 5/x
you have to round up to the next ounce so our book in the mailer was 8oz. usps first class for a small package is ~$3.75 depending on where in the us you're shipping to. you pay via paypal and get a pdf label 6/x
next i screenshot the label so i can fit two labels per printed page. it's a worthwhile step when printing. my printer broke so i used the library. bc of covid, they offer 25 pages per day of free curbside printing. maybe yours does too 7/x
cut out the labels and tape them to the mailers with packing tape. seal them. go to the post office. dejoy made them get rid of drop boxes that can accept packages so fuck him - you have to go in, but then just drop them off. no paying, no forms 8/x
i did two international (canada) shipments this way. you fill out the customs form via paypal and it includes that info in the final shipping label (u need to google like two code numbers for the form). you just have to sign it after, nothing else special. 9/x
you get free tracking for first class mail. the paypal info will have a link. if you fucked up the weight, they'll ship it anyway and charge you the difference later. easy as shit. have fun! stop hand writing addresses you freaks /end
Zac Smith makes books with Back Patio Press. He is the author of 50 Barn Poems (Clash Books) and Everything Is Totally Fine, due out from Muumuu House in December.