The controversy about the cost of shipping to the US has sparked a lot of thought and some suggestions from people.
One suggestion, that I did seriously consider before setting my price, was to charge more for the publication and less for the shipping. In the end I chose not to go this route for a couple of reasons. A) it would look like I was making more of a profit on the publication than I truly was and B) it would put into people’s minds that they didn’t have to pay the full cost of the shipping, that tiny independent businesses would subsidize their purchases.
If we want local yarn shops, small yarn/tool producers and independent publishers to stay in business the customers have to realize that we can only stay in business if we are honest with ourselves and with our customers. I could have charged $65 for the publication and $10 for shipping to the US but the postage is much higher than that, never mind the rest of the costs. So I didn’t go that route.
An alternate to the above would be to set a price including shipping. But that means people in Canada would be paying more than they should for shipping and very likely those in the US would be paying less unless I had a two tier pricing – one price for in Canada, one for the US.
Another strategy is to produce a publication with fewer samples. This would reduce the paper costs, the labour (weaving, wet finishing, cutting/taping/stapling/assembling) and might even bring the package down in size enough to qualify for ‘small packet’ pricing which is around $8 at the moment.
A further refinement on the above would be to provide the text files burned onto a cd and the samples loose, not stapled to card stock. That approach would probably fit into a cd mailer and likely qualify for ‘small packet’ pricing, as well.
So, those are some of the thoughts rumbling around in my brain. My goal with this publication was to fill a niche – provide actual fabric samples for study along with the project notes. Unfortunately that sort of format is more costly to produce than an ebook.