Basic posting help needed
Hi all, I’ve just listed one item for sale (am based in the UK) and in the inventory it gives the price, say £70 and then it says + postage. When I follow what is called template it puts UK to UK as £0. Do I have to assume that all UK postage is to be included in the price I am selling the item at?
Then below it says +5.50euro for say Germany. When I go to sell globally it has listed my product in several European countries and put a Euro price. However I cant see that it is adding postage. When I look at that template (all in German) it seems to say that Germany to Germany is euro0 but then also gives international prices.
Do I need to do something to add postage cost to Europe or will it automatically be added should someone from Europe by it?
Thanks in advance
Basic posting help needed
Hi all, I’ve just listed one item for sale (am based in the UK) and in the inventory it gives the price, say £70 and then it says + postage. When I follow what is called template it puts UK to UK as £0. Do I have to assume that all UK postage is to be included in the price I am selling the item at?
Then below it says +5.50euro for say Germany. When I go to sell globally it has listed my product in several European countries and put a Euro price. However I cant see that it is adding postage. When I look at that template (all in German) it seems to say that Germany to Germany is euro0 but then also gives international prices.
Do I need to do something to add postage cost to Europe or will it automatically be added should someone from Europe by it?
Thanks in advance
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
Amazon’s standard rates don’t, or not always. They are just supposed to be a contribution to the cost (and are actually what the customer pays). Obviously, it depends on the size and weight of the book. £2.80 will certainly cover the cost of a normal, not too thick paperback but any hardback is likely to cost £3.10 as a small parcel by Royal Mail. For Europe, it’s worse as even a paperback will cost £4.00. The only solution is to increase your price to cover the difference.
You mentioned a price of £70. If the book is worth that much, you’ll need to send it by Special Delivery which will add to your costs
29 replies
Seller_WlCqvgDUeQOAI
probably not. tbh I just wanted to sell a few books and this is all proving quite a bit more complicated than I had thought. Now it’s a question of not being defeated by it.
How do I set them? I put FBS because I assumed that this would let me set things…
Thank you!
Seller_WlCqvgDUeQOAI
I think I have finally found it. Is it under setting, postage settings and then I create a template that I can apply to specific items?
Seller_WlCqvgDUeQOAI
@Sequin thanks for pointing out that it was not automatic. I’ve changed posting setting but it doesn’t seem as if the postage costs really reflect actual postage. So you get a basic rate x then a price per kg but that’s not really how postage to Europe works. Do I need to accept some of that price variation or is there a way to make it more accurate?
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
You can only set your own postage charges if you are on the Professional selling plan (£25 a month plus £5 VAT). If you are on the Individual selling plan, Amazon sets the shipping charges according to product category and destination/service. For example, for books by standard shipping within the UK it’s £2.80
If you’re only planning to sell a few books the Pro plan is not worthwhile. Although the sales fees on each item are lower, you need to be selling about 40 items a month to make up the £30
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
Amazon’s standard rates don’t, or not always. They are just supposed to be a contribution to the cost (and are actually what the customer pays). Obviously, it depends on the size and weight of the book. £2.80 will certainly cover the cost of a normal, not too thick paperback but any hardback is likely to cost £3.10 as a small parcel by Royal Mail. For Europe, it’s worse as even a paperback will cost £4.00. The only solution is to increase your price to cover the difference.
You mentioned a price of £70. If the book is worth that much, you’ll need to send it by Special Delivery which will add to your costs
Seller_WlCqvgDUeQOAI
Thank you @olderithian, I’ve straight away downgraded to individual as don’t plan to do much for now. really interesting to know the volume needed. For now I think I’ll leave the UK postage as free on the item I have but if I was to sell cheap books then I assume I’ll be able to set a different template and so forth.
I’ve gone with the European default which at the moment don’t cover all the cost. Again it doesn’t matter for higher value items that don’t weigh too much.
thank you!
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
No, as I said, on the Individual selling plan the postage rates are automatically set by Amazon and you can’t alter them. Your £70 book will be priced at £70 plus £2.80 postage UK, and that’s what the customer will pay
Seller_WlCqvgDUeQOAI
that’s true as royal mail only cover to £20. Also there are many European country categories but in reality they are not really different in postage cost, just take longer (but at the moment it’s hard to predict postage times anyway). Ok I think I’ll have to study it some more tomorrow. Did you find anything useful when you started? like any videos etc
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
With Royal Mail, all of Europe is charged at the same rates
Seller_64jziShTiTjOq
Videos? When I started, they’d only just introduced talkies 
Seriously, there are several videos on the Amazon website. Click on “Help” then type “Seller university” in the search - magnifying glass icon at top right. Don’t take any notice of other videos or so-called advice on Youtube and the Internet - they are misleading. You should also read the relevant “Programme policies” that you can find by clicking on those words at bottom left of the Help page
Seller_WlCqvgDUeQOAI
Fab thanks. Yes I tried to watch some on youtube and got hugely confused so I’ll follow your suggestion and 
instruct myself! Thanks a lot for your help!
Seller_RiVN2dcWY6xy9
You might want to turn off interntaional postage on your books, the rates set by amazon on the non professional plan are totally inadequate for shipping overseas and you are likely to be in a loss making situaton for anything but expensive books.
You also should avoid the professional plan, as the monthly fees are designed for large volume selling. I’ve been selling books on here for 10 years and I am still on the basic plan because my level of sales do not justify converting to professional.
You may find ebay a better platform, but if you have some good quality books your could try abebooks (owned by Amazon) but here again there is a monthly fee, so you really need to list a lot of books to recover the cost out of sales.
Hope this helps
Seller_6JvuHGsfqCvmX
No point in selling a book on Amazon, if it weighs over 2kg shipped in professional book mailer. Whoever sets the delivery rates in Amazon, are in cloud cuckoo land. True cost of shipping to a UK buyer by Royal Mail is £8.99 but Amazon Charge the buyer and credit the seller with £2.80!! (up to 2kg it’s £3.10 so only loss to the seller is 30p. No big deal! Over 2kg price leaps up by £5.89!. In fact it’s cheaper to use courier service like Collect Plus, who would charge £5.85 inc. VAT. Still a 33.00 loss, but you could add that on to the price of the book if you wished to.
Shipping to Europe, even worse. Just under 2kg Royal Mail charge £12.52. Amazon allow the seller and charge the buyer, just over £4.00. a thumping loss to the seller of over £8 !!. They don’t ship to Europe over 2kg, as they know Couriers are cheaper than Royal Mail can manage.
I don’t know if books have any special concessions on shipping. I can’t find any evidence of it.
Would be interested to hear other peoples views, but of course, if you just google Amazon bad reviews you’ll find a stream of them on all different aspects of selling on Amazon. “Fings Ain’t What They Used To Be”, I think the Musical was!!
Shipping to Europe is
