In our law firm shopping cart we sell a lot of books. For as long as I can recall, each book purchaser has at to pay at least ten dollars’ postage to get a book from us.
Finally today I got a clue and realized that if I were to try hard enough I could probably figure out how to configure our law firm shopping cart to offer “book rate” as a shipping option.
I was fascinated to find that the instigator of “book rate” was then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt, who on October 31, 1938 enacted Proclamation number 2309 which starts this way:
Whereas I find after survey that the interests of the public, in the promotion of the cultural growth, education, and development of the American people, require that the postage rates on books … be modified …
For many decades this was called “book rate”. Eventually the USPS renamed it as “media mail”.
Today a colleague and I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to set it up in our firm’s shopping cart so that a person who is buying a book would be able to choose “media mail” postage. One of the challenges is to make sure that if the person is buying something that is not a book, the person will not be offered the choice of “media mail”. Eventually we think we got it figured out.
So for example if you decide to purchase one of our defective books entitled Oppedahl on PCT Forms and PCT Docketing, second edition (blog article) so as to save $59, as of today you can get by with $5.38 postage (for media mail) instead of $10.10 postage (for priority mail). You can see this in the screen shot above.
If on the other hand you decide to purchase a sophisticated home automation controller, you would see that the “media mail” postage rate is not offered.
Clearly I ought to have made “media mail” postage available a long time ago. Our firm’s publishing house, Penaya Publishing, has been selling books on our shopping cart since more than thirteen years ago. But I guess better late than never.
It is important, however, to keep in mind that media mail is very slow.