What's up with international shipping on Kickstarter?!?

[MarkB]

[DND][/DND]

I can't answer the question, but I will observe that the Adventures in the East Mark Kickstarter was printed in Canada (and shipped from the US, IIRC).

I don't know if that helped them on international shipping or not. I suspect not, as they probably weren't able to split their print run for international shipping.

I wonder if one could do it the other way round at all economically - print in the US, and then physically bulk-ship your entire international print-run to a distribution centre in Canada (or Mexico) via container truck.

At a guess, that might result in actual savings at very high volumes, but is probably overwhelmed by the overheads at typical Kickstarter scales.

 

[Morrus]

I wonder if one could do it the other way round at all economically - print in the US, and then physically bulk-ship your entire international print-run to a distribution centre in Canada (or Mexico) via container truck.

At a guess, that might result in actual savings at very high volumes, but is probably overwhelmed by the overheads at typical Kickstarter scales.

I know that at least one publisher shipped things from the US to the UK and then back to Canada and found that was cheaper than shipping from the US to Canada.

Yep, I know how strange that sounds.

The main issue with that idea is that you're now shipping everything twice instead of once. I imagine the costs there would be prohibitive.

 

[Scorpio616]

Another issue, besides the 2013 Shipping Spike, is some companies have used "methods" to get goods inside the EU and ship them from there, but not everyone can do that. But because it was done that by some companies, now some folks expect every company to do the same . Not to mention there is NO guarantees the laws that might permit that won't be changed form the time the Kickstarter begins to the time the Rewards ship.

The main issue with that idea is that you're now shipping everything twice instead of once. I imagine the costs there would be prohibitive.

And just imagine if in one of those countries importing / exporting laws get changed and a government is now holding the items until they get their tariffs, dock fees & VAT when your backers paid little more than materials cost!!!

 

[PaulofCthulhu]

The cost of international shipping has certainly made me think twice about being able to back some of the (literally) heavyweight Kickstarters. It's not the creators' fault, it's the nature of the shipping systems - especially for low volume independent creators who don't have bulk mail contracts.

Kickstarter and other crowd funding sites do seem to have created a certain expectation of what to offer/expect to receive as the following Guardian Masterclass indicates:

Reward-based crowdfunding has received a lot of attention in recent years. But if you'd rather attract serious investors – and spend less time thinking up gimmicks and less of your startup capital paying for them – equity crowdfunding may well be your best option.

 

[Enkill]

I ran a kickstarter a while back, and am now getting ready to ship. Luckily the vast majority of my backers were domestic (US), but all of the international backers are at least 50.00, some going almost as high as 100.00. What I've learned, is that you have to add extra money to your project's funding goal in order to account for the shipping costs of physical products, but it's very hard to determine what that can be, because, unless you can see into the future, you have no idea how many people will back your project.

 

[Mechalus]

For those interested, we were able to provide a little bit of relief to Canadians interested in Tact-Tiles.
More info here: https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-wet-and-dry-erase-gaming-surfac/posts/932060

I also threw up a blog post with a little more information. In it I explain how, even when charging as much for shipping as we currently are, we might still lose some money to shipping costs.

 

[mach1.9pants]

For me the method of pay now for product, at the time for shipping is the best. Not only is the shipping cost correctly paid by the consumer, it also stops Amazon taking it's 8% cut.

Living in NZ you just have to deal with the costs, it means I don't back things I'd love to (sorry Morrus!) and often save up orders for bulk shipping. That USPS 62$ flat rate box its a fair few books in but is stupid for one or two. I also get a lot of PDFs professionally printed.

 

[Agamon]

I know that at least one publisher shipped things from the US to the UK and then back to Canada and found that was cheaper than shipping from the US to Canada.

Yep, I know how strange that sounds.

The main issue with that idea is that you're now shipping everything twice instead of once. I imagine the costs there would be prohibitive.

Yep, that's how I got my 13th Age book. Ridiculous. And only worse now, it's been pretty bad for nearly a decade. I can get stuff from UK and China a lot quicker and cheaper than from the US.

 

[Dice4Hire]

I know when I shop on Ebay I look for UK and German auctions. Shipping is far more reasonable to Japan.

 

[Mechalus]

EDIT - Oops. Wrong thread.