Do You Know How to Mail a Book to France?

We know a very nice family living temporarily in France and I wanted to send one of my earlier books to them. First, I thought I would send it from Amazon here in the USA, but they wanted information that I didn’t have. So I thought I would be smart and send it from Amazon.Fr and ran into the same problem there. OK, no problem, I decided to go through US mail. You know the people they call USPS. They stop by your mailbox every day except Sunday. All of my books are available in about seventeen countries so I have never tried using the mail.

All in all, I learned a lot of French words today, I also learned how to use the Google translate button and fill in the blanks. Most of this information is available on the Internet, but you have to look hard and it takes time. I think the fastest and best way is to give my book to the lady who runs our local post office and let her do all of the work for me. There is also a way to print a label on line with USPS, but I couldn’t get that to work either. It seems that by going that way I have to have some specific information about shipping media that I couldn’t find.

I am sure my friends in France will read this and I just wanted them to know that the book will be on its way, one way or the other. I am a dedicated man and when I attempt to do something, I stay with it until it gets done. I will be going into town tomorrow just to have a chat with our extended postal service office at the edge of town. I know the lady that runs that location will put me onto the right track. My wife has friends in Paris and she had a great suggestion. She mentioned that we could use the book delivery as an excuse to visit Paris and see her friends. ( Maybe next time.)

One of the things I tried was to do a Google Search of people who have had a similar situation and I found hundreds of sites with all kinds of information, but nothing led me to an easy or right location. I am sure it was there, but I was just unable to make anything work for me. I was surprised that so many people had a similar situation and some had not resolved it yet. One of the biggest complaints I found in my search was that the postal service employees in this country are not familiar with the right service for sending a book overseas, so I printed off that part of the postal handbook to take with me tomorrow.

It’s been fun and very entertaining, I am sure once I get this thing down pat I will be sending more books abroad. My books have been sold in other countries, but I have never tried to send one myself, this has been a valuable lesson for me and I am sure I will use it more often from now on. One thing I learned is to write “TARIF LEVRE” on the package. Another thing is that some of the private companies that offer to help send a book want to charge you more than the book costs to begin with.

Dr. Robert E McGinnis – Author of: In Search Of Paradise