Hello,

I am new and thus far have only sent single copies of books to those who have requested them using the postage I buy here at PBS. 

I just received notification that someone wants two books which will be going to the same address.  Using the PBS system to buy postage, is there a way they can calculate sending more than one book bundled into one package or do I need to send them to the same address individually?

Thanks,

Laura

Hi Laura and welcome to PBS. 

The Help Center can answer your question better than I can:

What if I send multiple books?  How does that work?

• If more than one book is requested at once in the form of a bulk request, the Wrapper Settings page will have the database estimate for all of the books in the shipment.  (As always, you can adjust this weight estimate, and thereby adjust the postage that will print out.)
  • You will get Instant credits for all books in a bulk shipment if the bulk shipment is sent with Printed Postage--as soon as you mark the shipment mailed, you will get the credits for all the books.
• If you get multiple individual requests from the same member (not submitted as a bulk request), you can always adjust the weight of the package on one Wrapper Settings page from one of the requests to get proper postage to send all of the books using that wrapper, but of course, you will get Instant Credit ONLY for the book(s) listed on the wrapper you print out.  You will get credit for any other books in the shipment when they are marked received by the requestor.
  • Because individual requests cannot be combined after the fact into a bulk shipment by the sender, we recommend that if you receive multiple individual requests at once and intend to use printed postage, to "peek" at the address before printing with postage.
    • To do that, just choose "no extra services" and click "click Here" at the bottom of the page. This will show you the address information on a separate web page, without printing the postage.  If two or more books are going to the same place, you can follow the instructions above to change the weight on one wrapper to print postage only once for that shipment.  If you print postage for individual shipments, they cannot be combined and the postage cannot be refunded after printing.

I would just like to add that if you use the printed postage available here that you invest in a postal scale because the weights are not always accurate (in an occasional instance, off by a pound or two), especially when there are several books involved. You don't need an expensive scale, just something that will display weight in ounces, as many inexpensive food scales do. You will quickly pay for the scale in the savings you will see when you have accurate weights for the books you are sending.

Laura, welcome to PBS!  It's great you've found the forums - you can obtain lots of helpful advice here.

I just want to add that you definitely want to mail both books together to take advantage of postage savings.  Because media mail rates are set in one-pound increments, you can mail two "average sized" books for just a few cents more than a single book.  Sending 3 or more books to the same address is an even better deal!