I Know Why We're Fucked Up.

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I took a manuscript to the Post Office today. It cost me $5.60 to mail a 5 page mss to a magazine. Last month I mailed a 32 page mss for $4.65.

So, being the curmudgeon I am, I wondered aloud why 5 pages cost $1 more to mail than 32 pages.

The clerk chirps back...5 pages is a lot less than 32! Bigger parcels get better rates! Five pages isnt a parcel.

So I says, if I fold the 5 pages up and stick them in a business envelope I'd pay, what? One dollar and change?

She shes, YES!

Anyway, the bottomline is the non-parcel/non-1st class mail envelope (required by the mag) is too big/too small, and I got the special FUCK YOU rate.

So I said...I know why USPS is going bankrupt.

 

[Boota]

My drummer has always said we need to submit demo packs to foreign record labels. And he says it fanatically like it is the most unusual idea in the world and we're morons for not thinking of it. I think the last time he finally heard me when I told him that I'd been doing that. And I did it on my own dime, not band money. The average cost of postage for these packs was $15 each. Maybe $15 to get something anywhere in the world isn't all that bad, considering, but still submitting anything, be it manuscripts or demo packs, is quite a bit of money down the drain if it doesn't pan out.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

BOOTA

I dont mind paying my way in the world, but I do object to exploitation by a Federal agency. My 9x12 mailer with 5 sheets of paper inside shoulda cost me something between 1st class postage and the minimum for priority. That is, between 42 cents and $4. Call it $2.50. But I paid $5. 60? because the mailer was neither fish nor fowl, but is a standard size mailer.

The clerk is a newbie, maybe she's a dolt. I mean, some of them drag out calipers to measure the thickness of parcels.

 

[Boota]

Was there are query in the envelope? If not, and there is only the manuscript, you can send it via media mail and save quite a bit. They just don't allow any correspondence. I agree, though, that does seem excessive for an envelope that couldn't have weighed very much at all. 9x12 isn't something outrageous.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

BOOTA

Media Mail has size requirements, too.

99% of the time the clerks at USPS simply stamp the parcel like I want, but the newbies ride into Dodge with their calipers and rule books, and piss people off.

The newbies are trained by num nuts who havent seen a real post office in 40 years.