TIP! You can ship that book for cheaper

The joys of Media Mail!

April 15, 2015; 7:11 AM • by Ross Catrow

Sometimes you want to send your best pal–who moved to the far off desert environs of a terrible land called “Texas”–a much-loved copy of Moby Dick. Unfortunately, that thing weighs like 10 pounds and would cost a Pequod-load of cash to ship via traditional United States Postal Service methods.

Lucky for you, citizen with incredible taste in literature, the USPS is here to serve you with Media Mail. Created in the 1930s as a way to send books across the nation and cheaply spread educational materials, Media Mail offers a thrifty means of shipping said materials. For example, to ship my 10-pound copy of Moby Dick using Priority Mail would cost around $8.25, using Media Mail you save $1.30!

There’s a whole host of restrictions and guidelines outlining what qualifies for Media Mail, but books certainly do, as do most analog things that do not contain advertisements. Video games never qualify because, I guess the USPS doesn’t believe you can ever learn anything from a video game.