If you have made it to this page then congratulations!

Finding books is good, selling them is great. At this point you will have received an email from Amazon.com notifying you of your sale.

Hopefully you are reading this soon after your sale because you are required to ship within two business days from the day of sale. As long as you are using Stamps.com or Endicia there is no reason not to ship every day, but shipping every other day works fine.

Open your Amazon.com account and navigate to your seller account dashboard. Select the ‘View your orders’ link. Here you will see a list of the items that you have sold.

Minimize your browser and open your Stamps.com or Endicia software. You will need to enter your user name and password, then choose the ‘Print postage’ option.

Toggle back to your browser and select the ‘Print packing slip’ link that corresponds to the item you are shipping. Click on the print button and direct your computer to print the packing slip. We always print packing slips in draft mode in order to conserve ink. While you are in looking at the packing slip you will want to highlight and copy the address of your customer.

Toggle back to your shipping software and paste your customers address into the destination address field.

Toggle back to your browser. If you are still looking at the packing slip you should navigate back to the ‘view your orders’ page. Look at the shipping information. You will see either standard, expedited or international. We are going to cover the use of standard and expedited shipping. Please refer to the USPS homepage for information on international shipping.

As booksellers we have the opportunity to ship our merchandise in media mail format. This style of shipping is reserved for printed material. It is cheaper than standard mail but like standard shipping rates you will need to know the weight of the book you are shipping. Media mail is the slowest rate for shipping but we have never had a book arrive later then is allowed by Amazon.com, and we have shipped many books.

Select media mail from the shipping options in your shipping software. You will need to enter the weight of the book you are shipping. There are two ways to find this. If you signed up with Stamps.com you should have a postal scale that they provided. In this case simply turn on the scale. Wait for the lcd screen to show zeros, then place your book on the scale and observe the weight.

The option for those who have no scale is to toggle to Amazon.com. Search for the book by ISBN or title and scroll down to the product information which should be located about half way down the page. One of the characteristics that Amazon.com includes is the weight of the product. Look for the weight in pounds and ounces and transfer this information to your shipping software.

Click on the print postage button and look for the postage on your home printer.

When printing expedited you have two options, priority or flat-rate priority. We recommend always using flat-rate priority when it is an option. To use this option you will need to stop by your local post office and look at the selection of postage envelopes that the USPS provides free of charge. Grab a handful of the envelopes marked flat-rate priority. Any book that will fit into this envelope may be shipped in this manner. to print postage you will follow the same steps as above but will select flat-rate priority or priority on your shipping software. For priority you will need to enter a shipping weight but this will not be necessary for the flat-rate option.

Click on the print postage and collect the postage slip from your printer.

When packaging your flat-rate priority books, simply place the book and Amazon.com packing slip inside the envelope, peel away the adhesive guard on the envelope and seal. We always add one piece of tape across the seal in order to guarantee the safety of our product. Place the postage slip on the face of the envelope and tape across the all four sides and across the address section being careful not to tape over the bar codes on top or bottom. Your package is ready to drop into any mailbox.

Packaging media and priority mail are the same as above but you will be using your padded envelopes. We like to tape all sides of the envelope once it is sealed to ensure safe shipping. Adhere the postage slip in the same manner as above.

Congratulations! Once you deposit your orders into a USPS mailbox you will have completed a full transaction with your new online bookstore. This is just the beginning. Your book stock will grow and with it the profits that you receive. You will learn new tricks by talking to other dealers and by experimenting on your own. There are infinite ways for you to grow your business and we know you will find one that work for you.

Thank you for using the lessons on our site.