It is a bit steep. My last order to London was $46 for goods and $35.26 for shipping. It only makes it worthwhile to order if items are severely reduced in the sale.
I think you may be confusing good shippig rates with the benefits of bulk shipping rates. Thats likey why amazons is so low.
International shipping is just expensive, if you don't have overseas warehouses and aren't a big enough business to get bulk shipping discounts. You can check the going shipping rates for yourself (excluding supplies and handling) here. Cheapest package to Australia I can see is over $20 and is limited to less than 4 lbs. The CRB alone, without packaging or any other merchandise, weighs that. Cheapest rate over 4 lbs. (again without packaging supplies or paying the warehouse staff) costs $53.
Btw, I would think that Amazon carries the modules as well as the CRB so you could order everything you want from them and take advantage of their cheap shipping, no?
EDIT: Actual UPS shipping for a 5-pound package from Redmond to Australia (New South Wales, since I only know one Australian post code) would be $158 and take a week, according to the shipping calculator on their website. I think you're just underestimating how much it legitimately costs to ship halfway around the globe if you're not a huge company.
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Besides, Amazon has warehouses around the world. They're not just shipping from the US, I believe Europe alone has few dozen Amazon distribution and shipping centres. Actually, there's one being built right next to my home town right now, and supposedly it's going to handle a major chunk of European orders.
Vic Wertz on international shipping
Since the USPS eliminated the slow-but-cheap surface mail category in 2007, International Priority is the cheapest option coming from the US.
All of our shipping rates are based on weight—and the Core Rulebook is anything but slim. Even before packaging, it crests the maximum weight allowed by the cheapest international method we offer...hence the much increased shipping costs. :)
As sad as it is we Antipodeans are best to buy bigger books from Amazon. I subscribe to a few Paizo product lines as the percentage off and cheapish shipping rates for those books are as good as Amazon, plus I get the PDF. However getting the hardcovers is always Amazon cheaper, sadly.
If you wish to get a good deal, at the moment you can get orders over $125 bucks US free shipping to NZ/Oz, that includes pre-orders. So fill up your cart with stuff you want and even stuff that is not released and then select free shipping. So later on when pre-orders ship they only charge you the cost of the book. It is a good deal.
Good luck
(goes back to crying over 0.01c mass market paperbacks of books I want on Amazon)
I'd just like to point ut that it is not "sad" that shipping makes it cheaper to buy paizo products from other vendors.
It's how it works. If someone can provide a cheaper service of the same quality, (or functionally the same, as is the case when markau does not need his books in two days, but would prefer a large discount for a two-three week delay) they get the sale.
It'd be rather sad if this wasn't the case.
What's that bit about there being more than one way to ship orders, but only one way to ship the CRB? Seems wierd.
Well, at this point and given circumstances i´m totally opposed to it, but eventuelly there could be he free trade agreement between U.S. and Europe someday, which might better things for us there.
*self censored sarcastic comment about some current politics stuff*
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I'd just like to point ut that it is not "sad" that shipping makes it cheaper to buy paizo products from other vendors.
What's sad is that people want to give their money to Paizo, not some middleman, but cannot due to the expense involved.
I'd just like to point ut that it is not "sad" that shipping makes it cheaper to buy paizo products from other vendors.What's sad is that people want to give their money to Paizo, not some middleman, but cannot due to the expense involved.
Well, Paizo acts as middle man for all the 3pp.
I can get Paizo's products via Amazon without problem. I cannot get most 3pp products via Amazon, at least not in print. So the forbidding shipping costs really are hurting them, not Paizo.
Also a very good point.
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European customer here.
Yes international shipping rates suck, import taxes suck even more but i believe that neither is Paizo's fault.
Being an Adventure Path subscriber (with the 30% discount on each month's AP volume) i still end up paying 1 or 2 euros more than i would pay if i bought it from a european vendor (usually book depository) and that's assuming i don't get taxed*, of course by being a subscriber i also get the free pdf and get the 15% discount on other Paizo store products (which i plan to use mostly for pdf).
So OP, i also suggest to buy the core book from somewhere else and get the module from Paizo.
*i know my country's (which are the same as rest of EU iirc) custom rules and rates and i try to make sure that my order is tax free
That's the same for Europe. Even with subscriber discounts the hardbacks are not economical so amazon or book depository get my orders.
True for Canada as well, generally speaking. I subscribe for a few of the softcover books, but I buy the hardcovers at my FLGS.
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Well unfortunately the western (meaning U.S. + vasalls and european) print and music industry have some very annoying delusions about taxes and what they should earn, what makes printing here rather expensive.
Perhaps laser 3D printers this year will change some things there.
I can very well imagine a business modell where printers of some sort are deployed somewhere and you order something from a company what then get´s printed at the nearest place to you, instead of shipping it around the earth 5 times. But such things will depend on the customers too. Guess it would be a lot better for ecology.
Just imagine, when i get a book from Paizo, it was printed in China and then shipped to america to finally come to europe.
In my eyes it would be much better if Paizo would send a printing order to a press in europe and the job gets done there.
That COULD be an advantage of the digital age^^
In my eyes it would be much better if Paizo would send a printing order to a press in europe and the job gets done there.
That COULD be an advantage of the digital age^^
I believe Amazon is already doing this for CreateSpace publications. To a lesser degree, I think DTRPG's Print-on-demand also at least has separate US/European printing facilities.
I get a lot of PDF's printed by Lulu, black and white interiors, and the softcovers come to me from OZ and the Hard covers from France! Both are cheap shipping wise, so yeah I hope distributed printing is the future, even if it just OZ
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I wonder if there's ever going to be a situation where Amazon actually prints-on-demand and delivers niche books with an agreement with the publisher. I mean they already have POD, they have a colossal delivery infrastructure...all they'd need is PDFs and permission from publishers.
Well, essentially that's what solo writers do, pretty much. They outsource both printing and delivery to Amazon CreateSpace and never necessarily see even a single physical copy of their own book.
Heck, could even be that some publishers already do this, I don't know.
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I've been forced to claw back my subscriptions of late for shipping, once the package tips past the card stock envelope and into box territory the shipping quickly goes up. For a long time the subscriber discount and strong dollar helped, but with the Canadian dollar on the slide, I just don't have a choice.
The $10 discount over $100 rarely makes it worth my while to bump because usually pushing up to $100 makes my package push into the next size/price category, blowing shipping way up.
Finally the 10-14 day shipping estimate has slowly grown to more like 14-21 business days. I typically see my sub package arriving the day my next months sub package ships.
FYI I read this thread title as:
Infernal shipping rates are too high, please provide more options.
Unruly, you got me a bit wrong there.
Of course 3D printers won´t make a difference for books.
But my opinion is that it should be much more economical to "custom print" a book near your location somehow. Unfortunately it is not. In my eyes that is a sad thing, because the environment greatly suffers by this.
Printing a book in China in large scale, shipping it to U.S. and then shipping it to europa seems to be way cheaper than sending a pdf file to europe and then print it there somewhere. It is cheaper if you count dollars right now. In the long run, we, our childern and the environment pay a heavy price for this behaviour. Because all the cheap paper manufactories in China, all the ships and planes carrying our stuff leave a lot of traces. And that is not figured in that equation.
It´s similar if you try to be vegan. There is no gain if you stop eating meat, but eat a lot of vegetables that are produced in another part of this planet where possibly some (rain)forest is cut down for it and it is then carried for thousands of miles to you.
China is catching up and changes are already happening there, in the long run they might screw us up, because they used a trick on our stupid and greedy economies which only favor fast but sustainable growth.
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Printing a book in China in large scale, shipping it to U.S. and then shipping it to europa seems to be way cheaper than sending a pdf file to europe
I'm sorry, it's lame to pick on typos but in this case it was just too funny to think that shipping physical books to Europa (Jupiter's moon) would be cheaper than sending a PDF to Europe...don't we wish!! :D
and then print it there somewhere.
Ehm, you forgot this part of the sentence.
Chief Technical Officer
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What's that bit about there being more than one way to ship orders, but only one way to ship the CRB? Seems wierd.
Phrasing that more accurately:
There's only one even *somewhat* reasonable way to ship an item that weighs over 4 pounds (such as the Core Rulebook) from the US to an international destination: USPS International Priority. It's by no means cheap, but it costs far less than any other option.
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DHL express is often cheaper than (and is always comparable to) USPS International Priority on other sites.
I realise you get volume discounts (and that others sometimes lose money on shipping) but nonetheless I hope you'll eventually be able to broaden the choice of shipping companies (DHL is nearly always quicker, plus it provides tracking for international orders).