It was recommended we start a new list rather than add to/edit Rosie's previous list prior to the rate increases so here it is. With new rates come new rules... and thus a new thread as well. :tada:

NOTE: Due to USPS Postal Rate increases and the elimination of Surface Mail for International shipments, the costs of M-Bags have increased significantly. Since the amount to be included with each parcel you send for an M-Bag may differ from country to country, the required amount you must send along with your book(s) is given next to each listing.

If you're sending more than one book, have a scale, and wish to calculate how much to enclose based on weight, then please always round UP to the next nearest whole dollar amount.

• Sunlightbub (UK) organized by Three - $2 per book
• Cosmic-gin (AU) organized by Needmorezoloft - $5 per pound (or use $3/paperback and $5/hardcover)
• Kislany (CY) organized by BookMooch Mary (details here) - $2 per book
• Amberkatze/Rianonne (Austria) organized by KathyB - $3 per pound (or use $2/paperback and $3/hardcover)
• Candy-is-dandy/Teachie (UK) organized by CheriePie - $3 per pound (or use $2/paperback and $3/hardcover) closing 4/30/08
• catsalive (AU) organized by AlterEgoZoe - $5 per pound (or use $3/paperback and $5/hardcover) closing ???
• camis (UK) organized by candieb - $2/paperback and $3/hardcover
• luckaye (QLD, AU) organized by Azuki - $5 per pound (or use $3/paperback and $5/hardcover)
• bluejazzyfish (UK) organized by elsi - $3 per pound (or use $3/hardcover, $2/paperback)
• VeganMedusa (NZ) organized by chambejd - $5 per pound (or use $3/paperback and $5/hardcover)

Handy Tip: Keep an online shared list between sender and recipient, someplace like Zoho Planner or BackpackIt, to keep track of books coming and going.

M-bag Tips:

• Create a online shared list at Backpack. Then either the m-bag sender or recipient can add to the list the books they're expecting and from whom. These can then be checked off as they arrive. When it's time to ship the bag out, just enclose a print out of the Backpack list in the box and voila :tada: there's your packing slip too.
  
  It's much easier to track the books as you go instead of trying to list them all at the end. Also, by listing them as people say they're going to send them, you can easily spot if there was anything that was sent but never arrived on your end and follow up as necessary. Same if there's still any books "in transit" when you're ready to send the m-bag on it's way.

Wow!!! You are going to have a full house of books!

Thanks again for organising the bag for me! and also for the others! It is great that there are such nice generous people out there! :luv: :kiss:

Heh, fortunately I've got both an office and a spare bedroom upstairs so books don't take over our living space. As if they haven't already... :lol:

Actually there's a nice side benefit to all this too. If one of y'all wins a book I had my eye on in a swap, and whomever is sending it decides to send it to me for the M-Bag, then I can try to sneak it into my own reading queue while it's waiting here. :D Of course, if it's a series book, I'd have to be caught up on that particular series and not have a lot of "back issues" to catch up on first. But for when that's not the case, it just may come in handy. :whistle:

a spare bedroom?
Hmmm....

C'mon over! I'd love to have you as a house guest if you decide to visit the US. :w00t:

Just know that I'm not in Boston proper, but 13 miles (21 km) north of the city. So if you want to jaunt around in the city, you need to drive in or take the train. Not a problem of course, but just thought I'd mention it in case you were thinking I lived like right in downtown Boston or something. I'm in da burbs baby! :P (burbs = suburbs)

Thanks for running the M-bag for us Cheriepie, it is very kind of you.
I met up with Candy-is Dandy at the Uncon and collected my M-bag books. I now have a few more added to my wish-list to complete the series I have had sent over. Looks like I will need to keep my eyes open for bookshops when I come to Canada in July. (At least now I have an excuse to buy more books!)

hugs

Vanda/teachie

burbs is best. I live almost in the wood myself (it's a HUGE wood). Indeed it is 30-45 min by bus from the city center or 10 min by train/metro but you definitively don't have that impression here. During the night I'm listening nightingales and of course in the morning bunch of other birds (sometimes that's quite annoying) :)

LOL :lol: yup, I love falling asleep (especially in the summer) to the night birds and waking up to them as well. Though more often than not, I'm waking up to a lawn mower or some neighbor banging away on their house! :bash: But then again, you know the hours I keep. :cool2:

Just to say that if someone needs an M Bag, I'd be more than happy to organize one for somebody. :kiss:

catsalive(AU) organized by AlterEgoZoe - $5 per pound (or use $3/paperback and $5/hardcover)


I think that's fair enough, no? :wink:

yup, Aussie is more than Europe so that's definitely fair.

And yeah, as I told you in IM too, (but I'll repeat it here for anyone who's wondering), since the amounts to enclose are so much higher now, it makes more sense to quote a per pound rate as well, for people who are sending along more than one book. It'll save them a bit of money.

But since enclosing cash inside the book has always been the preferred way of sending it along, the per book rates are best rounded up to the next whole dollar. :D


I'll get ya in the top list now Zoe and Cats!

Can you add me to the list please! Candieb is organising - $2 per paperback, $3 per hardback.

You're in baebae! :thumbsup:

I would happily do an M bag for anyone needing one.. I did one for MissyZ and she kinda fell off the face of the earth and I never did hear if she received it or not so it kinda bummed me out..

Let me know!

I'll be glad to set up an M-bag for someone who needs one.

Question: is there an equivalent for mailing from Europe to the USA?

I'm now running an M-bag for bluejazzyfish in the UK.

Thanks for posting here Elsi- I completely forgot :D

oh- is $2 for paperbacks, $3 for hardbacks alright?

That should be perfectly fine for the UK.

Most people tend to send one book at a time, but because the price is so much more than it was before, I tend to like to quote a per pound rate too for people who have scales and are sending a few books along.

Sending two mass market paperbacks for instance, will normally still weigh less than a pound, so they could send $3 for those two books, instead of $4 (at $2 apiece). I figure that with more than 2 books, it starts to get pretty expensive if you still use the per book numbers, so feel free to quote a per pound rate too, esp for people who are sending you a few books at a time....

thank you CheriePie

I'm happy to do an m-bag for someone who wants one. Just let me know!

I wish there was but I haven't heard of anything here in Austria.

Question: is there an equivalent for mailing from Europe to the USA?

I can only say that in Germany at some special post office you can sent m-bags.
I use it a lot with a friend of mine in Singapore, you can sent surface or airmail m-bag.

The delivery time is around 3-6 weeks for airmail and surface 3 weeks to 3 month.

take care Nicole aka nikel27

I've asked in our Post Office and they say there isn't anything.

Best you can get is up to 5kg printed paper for £26.26 surface mail to the US. not sure how many books that is??

I think that needs to be made more clear or something..I'm going by the costs quoted in the first post - I was going to send luckaye's two books (MMPs) to Azuki for her m-bag, but the stated cost was $3 for each paperback. That's six bucks plus $2.13 shipping for a total of $8.13 - I can mail it direct to Lucie in Australia for $8.65. What's the point of the m-bag? :shrug:

I found the same thing recently - on my package shipping through the mbag to luckaye would have been only .13 less so I shipped direct - why make her wait while an mbag fills so I can save .13? :shrug:

But you should've only been sending $5 max, not $6. And now you see exactly why I'm encouraging a per pound rate as opposed to a per book rate. Many times, 3 mass markets still weigh under a pound even. But for single, lightweight books, definitely you are sometimes better off sending direct, and I encourage everyone, particularly people with scales at home, to check prices at the USPS website to determine the best way to end.

As you can see from Australia's page in the International Mail Manual, an 11 lb. m-bag is $49.50, which is why they're using $5 per pound. (See the Direct Sack to One Addressee — M-Bags section towards the bottom.)

For people who don't have a scale, you can sometimes use the weights you find at Amazon. But I'd caution you to use them only as a guideline. I recently had a number of young adult books by Cate Tiernan that Amazon said only weighed 3.1 or 3.2 ounces, but was actually 5.6 and 5.7 ounces respectively. So in cases like this, using Amazon's numbers would've simply told me that I could have 2 or 3 of those books and it'd still be within a pound. Therefore, I'd send only $5 along with.


I'm really not sure how to make all this clearer in the top post while still keeping it simple, in a list format. Simply reading this thread I believe will get you the additional information you're seeking, but if you have any other suggestions for rewording things up top, then feel free to let us know. :)

I guess I just didn't see where the $5 max was coming from. :shrug: I see now up top where it says by pound, but my two books were 10.8 oz. And I was originally going by Lucie's siggy, so then I came here and just saw the same stuff. I guess for me it was just clear as mud. :blush:

So in the list up top, is it not clear enough? I tried to make the part about sending more than one book, and going by poundage clear enough, while not muddling it up too much for people that simply want to know how much to enclose for a single book they're sending.

Coming into this though, I had assumed that everyone had some type of scale for weighing packages, whether it be a postal scale, a food scale, etc. But was surprised to find out that only half or less of you do. :shrug:

However some generalizations can and probably should be made:

- Two standard size mass market paperbacks will almost always weigh less than a pound.
- Three thinner (~250 pages) mass market paperbacks will almost always weigh less than a pound as well.
- One standard size trade paperback and one mass market paperback will be fairly close to a pound, probably give or take a few ounces.
- Figure a hardcover to weigh right around a pound, sometimes it's an ounce or two more, but the pound rate should cover it unless it's a thick omnibus or something.

What often happens for me is that I have books that need to go to the m-bag organizer anyway. So I send books to azuki that are for azuki and also ones that are for luckaye. But I guess it won't always work out that way for me...

Also, for packages that are under 13oz, I love being able to drop them in the mailbox without having to go to the post office. International packages always have to go to the post office and wait in line. Ugh.

Not if you use metered mail or "printed postage", with software from Stamps or Endicia, or even printed online from Paypal. (Or using like a Pitney Bowes mail meter.) The 13 ounce restriction only applies to stamped mail, which has no way of tracing back to its original sender. Since metered or printed postage does, the 13 ounce rule doesn't apply. :grin:

PS - I also just sent a book to Amber along with 2 that were going to Kathy...

Please update the top post to indicate the appropriate pound rate for bluejazzyfish's m-bag. The "usual and customary" amount...

Since these are the m-bag rates for the UK (Great Britain)

Weight not over 11 lbs. $31.35
Each additional pound or fraction of a pound 2.85

I'd usually recommend a per pound rate of $3, so I'll go ahead and add that to the top post for ya.

In the beginning, I didn't always do this automatically because a few of the organizers preferred to keep it more simple, using the per book rate like we had with the surface m-bags. But as has clearly been demonstrated by this thread, I anticipated that a per book rate would often work out to be too much in cases of more than one book. So I'm glad more people are willing to adopt it.

Well, believe it or not, I FINALLY received the books for Butterfly-Noir's M-Bag from fireflywishes!!! Firefly sent them out to me via priority mail (at a cost greater than it would've been to actually send out an M-bag directly to Butterfly-Noir, no less!) months ago but they never arrived here. Come to find out, the postman delivered them to the wrong address. All these months the box has been sitting on the enclosed back porch of the empty house down the street. The house finally made it's way through probate and was released for sale and the new owners found the box when they moved in.

So, add me to the list of people doing M-bags if Butterfly-Noir would still like to receive one! I have no idea the cost to send to her country (Portugal) but I'm sure someone here does.

I'll be making JE's on all the books in the box and will also add the list to backpack.

Oooh...... herbwench, butterfly-noir is currently MIA.... mail has been returned from her last known address and no one has been able to contact her......

If you're able to track her down, please let us know....

:shrug:

WOW - what a strange situation with the address and the empty house, etc.!! :blink:

Oh okay, I just refreshed to see Rosie's reply, but I know that this is one of the m-bags that was still open and/or in a state of unknown from the old m-bag thread. So should we move it over there? :shrug:

In any case, I won't put it up top for that reason. But wow, that was freaky about a Priority Mail package sitting at an empty house all those months. I suppose your postal employees have shit for brains! :dunce: :lol:

As for rates to Portugal, they're the same as for the UK and most of the rest of Europe. See IMM: Portugal: Direct Sack to One Addressee.

Well, seeing as butterfly-noir is MIA I won't be sending off any books to her any time soon! That's a real bummer though seeing as how I finally have some books here to send.

Thanks for the link to the rates for Portugal!

And yes, I do believe that particular postal employee has shit for brains! My regular guy is great and would never make such a mistake. When we have a new guy or someone who is just filling in it's a different story entirely! I had a long "going off" session at the post office today. Good thing they know me so well and can take it in stride or I'd probably never get mail again. LOL

You could move it to the old mbag thread if you like. I just adjusted the Members with Outstanding Commitments to take fireflywishes off - I wish we could find out something about butterfly-noir..... :shrug:

If anyone does track her down please let me know. In the meantime, I can just hold on to the books that were sent my way. There aren't that many of them so they don't take up too much space.