Shipping with PufferPrint
Door-to-Door Delivery for Your Print Project
One of the important but often overlooked choices you’ll need to make when printing your book is how you would like your order delivered from our print facility in China to it’s final destination.
Printing with PufferPrint means significant savings by printing overseas without having to deal with the headache of arranging international shipping, customs, import taxes, and other complexities of exporting and importing goods.
We handle all of the logistics for you so you can focus on writing and illustrating you next book!
We offer 2 types of shipping – sea shipping (standard) and air shipping (expedited).
We also allow you to split your shipment and send part of it by air and the remainder by sea. We refer to this option as “split shipping”.
Choosing the right shipping for your project means weighing the importance of 3 factors: cost, speed of delivery, and environmental impact. Whichever method you choose, your books will be delivered directly to your door or to the final destination of your choice.
Let’s exploring our shipping options:
Did you know?
Only about 10% of your books’ carbon footprint comes from their production and the remaining 90% comes from shipping.
Shipping by sea will reduce the carbon footprint of your order by over 50%!
Option 1: Sea Shipping
Shipping your order by sea is significantly cheaper and better for the environment, but it is also the slower of our 2 shipping methods.
For small orders (250-500 books), sea shipping is about half the cost of air shipping. And for larger orders, shipping by sea can save you as much as 75% on your shipping cost.
After your books have completed production it takes ~6-8 weeks for them to be delivered when shipping by sea. That includes preparing the shipment for export from China, traveling by container ship to the destination country, clearing customs, and traveling the last stretch from the seaport to your door by FedEx, UPS or DHL.
Advantages of Sea Shipping:
- Significantly cheaper
- Better for the planet! Over 50% reduction in your order’s carbon footprint.
Disadvantages of Sea Shipping:
- Slower – ~6-8 weeks for delivery
Option 2: Air Shipping
The obvious advantage of air shipping is that it is much faster than shipping by sea.
Air shipping takes ~3 weeks for books to be delivered to you which includes preparing the shipment for export from China, traveling by plane to the destination country, clearing customs, and traveling the last stretch to your door by FedEx, UPS, or DHL.
Advantages of Air Shipping:
- Faster! ~2-3 weeks for delivery
Disadvantages of Air Shipping:
- More expensive. Cost about 2x for small orders and 3-4x for larger orders.
- ~2x larger carbon footprint than sea shipping
Option 3: Split Shipping
Split shipping balances the best of both air shipping and sea shipping!
Part of your order will be delivered by air so you can start selling and shipping books right away.
Then the remainder of your order will be shipped by sea which will save you money and reduce the environmental impact of your order.
We can also split your order and deliver it to different destinations. For example, you could have some of your books delivered to your home and the remainder delivered to a warehousing and fulfillment provider of your choice (e.g. Amazon).
How Will Your Books Be Packed
Your books will be packed ~25-50 per box depending on the size and weight of your books. For orders of more than 1,000 books, the boxes will likely be delivered on pallets of ~40-50 boxes per pallet.
Tracking Your Order
PufferPrint will supply you with a tracking number that will become active when the shipment arrives in your country and clears customs. If you’re shipping by sea we can also provide you with the cargo ship’s estimated date of arrival at the seaport, but keep in mind that sea schedules often change due to weather or other unexpected events.
Get a Free Quote
Select your print option or schedule a 15-minute consult to get a FREE quote for your next project. We’ll work with our print team to give you an unbeatable price quote for a beautiful, bookstore-quality finished product.
