Well, here's some good news for those of us who are in the midst of book promotion campaigns -- but it comes in the form of bad news. The post office has just increased its rates for first class postage and for mailing postcards. You can check out the new rates at CNN.com which, for some reason, is easier for this particular book publicist than going directly to the "calculate postage" page on the U.S. Postal Service's Web site.
Anyway, if you conduct snail-mailings of media kits, or if you send out postcards to your mailing lists, to try to drum up book promotion opportunities or book sales, then you'll be spending more now than you would have spent two weeks ago on your endeavors.
But I promised you some good news, and here it is. If you're sending out books and media kits via Priority mail, or you're sending out books via Media Mail (no paperwork allowed), then the rates will not go up. So, for most authors and publishers, the rate increases will probably not end up increasing the costs of a book promotion campaign -- for the time being.
I have faith that, one day soon, the rates for the rest of the United States Postal Services' offerings will go up again and, when it does, that will send the costs of book promotion campaigns soaring yet again.
But, for the time being, we're safe. Unless we want to mail our mom a belated Mother's Day card . . . but none of us would be in a position to have to send our moms a belated Mother's Day card, would we? Me? I took my mom to see the new "Star Trek" movie on Mother's Day. Maybe not the best movie choice in the world for my mom but, hey . . . I enjoyed it. For the most part. I could have done without the explosions and violence, but then, I guess the director of the movie had to spend that gazillion dollar special effects budget somehow.
