Why All Bibliophiles Should Want to Save the USPS
[image description: A United States Postal Service delivery van parked on a residential street.]
Real talk: there are too many bad things happening in the US to count. I’m not sure how high saving the United States Postal Service (USPS) is on your ladder of priorities, especially considering that coronavirus is still rampaging and police violence is on the rise, but here’s why you should care, especially if you’re a book lover.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t fully appreciate USPS until I started selling vintage books on Etsy. Starting an online bookstore forced me to get acquainted with the various intricacies (and annoyances) of all the different shipping carriers, their rates, and their pros and cons. For non-book items, the rates between USPS, FedEx, and UPS are similar, though USPS tends to be cheapest. However, for books, it’s no contest.
USPS is the only shipping carrier in the US that has special media mail pricing. That means if you’re shipping books, it’s ridiculously cheap. The same weighted package for non-book items would be triple or quadruple what it is to mail books. Used booksellers rely on media mail to keep their prices affordable for their customers and bookstores selling new books rely on media mail to keep them in the black since the profit margins for new books are already tight.
How can USPS afford to offer such low rates for shipping books? Because they’re subsidized by the federal government because it’s believed that every person should have access to mail. And since USPS gets federal subsidies, they don’t have to worry as much about whether or not they’re profitable. This might sound like a pitfall on the surface, but it’s actually the beauty of it. If USPS was forced to be profitable, they could easily decide not to deliver mail to people who are deemed too hard to reach. People in rural areas would be disproportionately disenfranchised.
Which leads me to another important point: USPS is crucial for getting books to people in book deserts. Books can be ordered online and shipped affordably, regardless of how rural the address. Other shipping carriers like UPS and FedEx are forced to prioritize profits because they’re privately owned, so they can jack up the cost of shipping to rural places. They can even decide not to ship to rural places at all, which leads me to another important point and a little-known fact.
UPS and FedEx are actually two of USPS’s biggest customers. That’s because UPS and FedEx already don’t want to deliver to far out places, especially when they decide it’s not worth their time, so they hire USPS to do what’s called “last mile delivery.” That means the private shipping carrier will move the package most of the way, then rely on USPS to take it to its final destination to save the private shipping carrier money.
Make no mistake: if Trump has his way and blocks funding to USPS, book lovers will suffer. Deeply and unquestionably. Individual readers will suffer and your favorite booksellers will suffer too. It might even be enough to put some people out of business.
As a personal share, my father-in-law is a retired mailman and raised my husband and his sister with what he made working that job, so losing the USPS also means putting otherwise middle-class people out of work.
On top of that, my mailman is a fucking lifesaver. I’ve been having panic attacks when I have to leave the house because I’m so paranoid about the coronavirus, but of course, I want people to shop in my Etsy vintage store, which means I have to fulfill orders. I told my mailman how I nearly barfed from a panic attack after running to the post office to drop off orders and he’s been picking them up off my porch ever since, at no additional cost. So my shop stays running and my mental health is intact.
There are several petitions circulating to save USPS: Change.org, MoveOn.org, and ActionNetwork. I hope you’ll sign them, spread the word, and buy some stamps. It’s a great time for snail mail.
