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Freight & Shipping Costs

5 replies [Last post]
Mon, 04/05/2010 - 22:28
MichaelG1001
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Joined: 04/05/2010

Hi Everyone,

I am new to this community but have been designing a few board games for the past two months or so. I first got the idea for these games about June 2009 and have been working in a passive manner on them since then, with my efforts ramping up since the beginning of 2010.

I have a question to all the self publishers and game retailers in the group: What to do about Postage/Mail/Shipping/Freight costs?

I live in Australia and if I go ahead and publish my game I want to be able to have a worldwide market. However I am having difficulty finding cheap shipping estimates. The primary locations I’d wish to ship would be North America and Europe.

How do you all deal with the seemingly impossible freight charges? Is there a company that will ship a game for about $10 internationally? The game is mostly made up of paper and cardboard so it would weigh 1 KG – 2 KG at the most (probably more towards 1.5 KG than a full 2KG) and the box at the moment is looking to be about 26 cm Length x 26 Width x 6 cm Height.

Thanks you in advance for helping a newbie out. I’m sure a lot of other designers are wondering the same thing.

Michael.

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Mon, 04/05/2010 - 23:02
#1
truekid games
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Joined: 10/29/2008
what's your intended

what's your intended production run and method?

are you making them yourself or having them made?
are you making a few hundred copies, a few thousand, or are you doing them as the orders come in?

if you're doing low numbers and/or by hand, there's not really a great solution. postage is postage. (if you're doing it through a POD company that handles fulfillment as well- like gamecrafter, superior POD- then the question would be moot, so i assume that's not the case).

if you're doing higher numbers, you can contact distributors and/or fulfillment companies in the appropriate country to store and ship things for you.

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Tue, 04/06/2010 - 05:26
#2
MichaelG1001
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Joined: 04/05/2010
Further Clarification

I am currently considering self publishing and have devised ways that would create a per unit profit without sacrificing quality.

I plan on producing low numbers at first with my first run limited to 20 - 100 copies at most, unless there is a great reason to produce more as an initial run.

Thanks for your reply,

Michael.

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Tue, 04/06/2010 - 12:42
#3
scifiantihero
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Joined: 07/08/2009
I think that . . .

. . . living in Australia is going to limit your profits or your market.

From the comments I've read about shipping to there, and from the few things I've ebay-ed from there in my life, shipping seems like it's definitely going to be a major barrier.

Speaking for myself, you'd have to really convince me that a game was good enough to be worth it's weight again in postage. I don't know about other people, though!

:)

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Tue, 04/06/2010 - 19:03
#4
rpghost
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Joined: 03/03/2009
I would recommend finding a

I would recommend finding a couple online stores in the countries you want to target and send them several copies (bulk) on consignment to sell. That way the shipping can be reduced per unit and people buying them will get them quickly (and maybe with something else they order) when it does sell. I do this from time to time on my http://www.RPGShop.com store in the USA as I try to help indies out.

Of course if the game is good enough, look into someone publishing it for you :)

James
http://www.MinionGames.com

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Sun, 05/30/2010 - 05:28
#5
Mondainai
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Joined: 07/26/2008
Sweden isn't too great either :(

It costs me 17 € to send one game somewhere farther than Denmark. So I normally send boxes of 4-10 copies (depending on what's the optimal shipping quantity for the game) to online retailers in Europe and US. When someone asks me on BGG or otherwise, I direct them to those retailers.

In addition to the cost-saving, it also saves a lot of time. The 10 first times you walk to the post office, you're walking on pink clouds. The 100th time, you walk with chains and fetters ;)

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