What's up with international shipping on Kickstarter?!?

[doctorhook]

Why the heck is Kickstarter international shipping always so ridiculous? I live in Canada, and being right next door to the United States affords me absolutely no advantage over Timbuktu or Fiji when it comes to shipping prices on Kickstarters. Why?! It's seriously aggravating.

I have funded Kickstarters before. I backed [MENTION=1]Morrus[/MENTION]' recent project, "What's O.L.D. is N.E.W." (which I'm pretty excited about), but limited myself to PDF versions, mainly to avoid the ridiculous international shipping rate; I recall Morrus mentioning that, being in the United Kingdom, even he has to pay that same larcenous shipping rate for his own products.

Currently, I would really like to back [MENTION=6770096]Mechalus[/MENTION]' Tact-Tiles Kickstarter. However, the shipping rates jump from $16 USD within the United States to $50 USD!! everywhere else, regardless of volume. That's a seriously unbelievable price, and I have to imagine many other potential international backers do a double-take when they see this. Most frustrating of all is the fact that my relatives in Alaska (remote, but part of the United States, for anyone who didn't know) can have these products shipped to them for more than 1/3rd the shipping rate of my friends in Windsor, Ontario (a medium-sized Canadian city literally across a bridge from Detroit, Michigan). That's entirely nonsensical.

I understand it's not the creators' fault that shipping is this outrageous. What I don't understand is whom I really should be blaming, and why these shipping rates need to be so absurd. I know this forum includes a number of Kickstarter veterans, so please enlighten me.

 

[Umbran]

My understanding (and someone correct me if I am wrong) is that Kickstarter itself doesn't handle anything but the money. It isn't like your game book gets published, handed to Kickstarter, and Kickstarter ships it to you. All the shipping is handled by the people who run the project. Whatever shipping infrastructure the project team can manage is what you get. So, it may be someone in their living room, packing boxes and taking them to the Post Office, UPS or what have you.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

As an Australian, I completely understand where you are coming from. Unfortunately international shipping from the US is expensive and it seems to have gone up quite a bit in the last year or two.

For those living in Canada, it is also rather arbitrary in that, sending it over your border adds a heap to the shipping costs, even in situations where the package isn't travelling very far geographically.

 

[pedr]

The USPS appears to be trying to subsidise domestic rates with extraordinary increases in international rates. Which makes some kind of sense, politically, but has made it extremely uneconomic to offer reasonably priced overseas shipping as part of Kickstarter projects. The rational choice for most products is to exclude non-US backers from physical tiers, despite the outcry that causes. It's one of the major threats to Kickstarter at the moment - or at least to the kind of projects we've seen so far, with significant bonuses or exclusive rewards for backers.

Were I Kickstarter, I'd try to leverage the relationship with Amazon they have for US payments and come to some deal where Kickstarter rewards could get into Amazon's distribution system and sent in bulk for forward delivery in destination countries (or consider setting something similar up) but for now I'm generally sticking with PDF rewards for projects which I know will ship from the US.

One solution is for projects to use POD, but that's not economic for projects which want to get their product into game stores, or expect a large print run.

 

[Morrus]

It's the US postal services. For whatever reason, shipping something out of the US (even just over the border to Canada) is prohibitively expensive. It's cheaper to ship something from the UK to Canada than from the US to Canada, for example. And that's books - non-book are even worse.

The only way around that is to produce everything outside the US. Which would be fine of 80% of the customer base wasn't in the US.

And the bad news? It seems to be getting worse!

 

[delericho]

The rational choice for most products is to exclude non-US backers from physical tiers, despite the outcry that causes.

I'm really not convinced that's the 'rational' choice. Surely, it's better if someone who really wants the product at least has the option of getting it, if they're willing to pay the costs?

 

[pedr]

I'm really not convinced that's the 'rational' choice. Surely, it's better if someone who really wants the product at least has the option of getting it, if they're willing to pay the costs?

That'd be the case if Kickstarter separated funds for shipping from the total raised towards the project. At the moment, a project runner doesn't really know what proportion of the raised funds will be needed for shipping until the surveys are completed late in the fulfilment process. Given the disparities between domestic and international shipping from the US, it makes it impossible to plan a campaign before launching it, as any particular funding milestone comes with a significant unknown as to the amount available for project creation, reinvestment, etc, and the amount which will be used in shipping. This could turn an apparently profitable project into a loss-making one.



One solution is to require backers to pay separately for shipping, as Monte Cook Games has with The Strange, but that risks sticker shock as the other difficulty is that postal charges fluctuate (increase!) over time, and so any contribution to those set at the start of the campaign may be unable to cover the charges by the time product ships.



Fred Hicks has written about this, and it's worth reading what he has to say about Kickstarters!

 

[delericho]

That'd be the case if Kickstarter separated funds for shipping from the total raised towards the project.

I think perhaps I can see a hint of another "rational choice".

One solution is to require backers to pay separately for shipping, as Monte Cook Games has with The Strange

Yep.

the other difficulty is that postal charges fluctuate (increase!) over time

This is true, but the same is true of everything else - printing costs, labour costs for anything the proposer isn't doing themselves (and living costs for them if they do!), manufacturing costs for any parts, etc etc. It's incumbent on those proposing a project to do their research and properly estimate how much it will really cost them to deliver.

(And, incidentally, that's one of the reasons why Monte Cook and Morrus each have successful Kickstarters done, while many many people do not - because they've done that due diligence and come up with proper estimates. Very little of it is luck.)

 

[Morrus]

This is true, but the same is true of everything else - printing costs, labour costs for anything the proposer isn't doing themselves (and living costs for them if they do!), manufacturing costs for any parts, etc etc.

Not nearly to the same extent. Thus this thread. We're not making it up, I promise! Shipping costs as much as the rest all put together, fluctuates wildly, and cannot be predicted.

It's incumbent on those proposing a project to do their research and properly estimate how much it will really cost them to deliver.

(And, incidentally, that's one of the reasons why Monte Cook and Morrus each have successful Kickstarters done, while many many people do not - because they've done that due diligence and come up with proper estimates. Very little of it is luck.)

I can't speak for them, but even people like Monte and Fred Hicks have said publicly that they get problems from this, and they're about as good at this KS thing as you can get. Hicks himself has considered not selling physical goods outside the US and has blogged about it, because it's a problem that he, who has raised hundreds of thousands on Kickstarter, struggles with. And if he, with his expert planning, meticulous research, and vast experience in the subject can't do it, that does rather suggest that the problem isn't with the KS creators, it's with the system they have to work under. KS itself doesn't help matters at all with its setup.

 

[delericho]

Not nearly to the same extent. Thus this thread. We're not making it up, I promise!

No, of course not. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

Shipping costs as much as the rest all put together, fluctuates wildly, and cannot be predicted.

In that case, I'm a little confused, because you did seek out and find cheaper shipping options for your What's O.L.D. is N.E.W. Kickstarter - which was a key deciding factor in my decision to back it.

Hicks himself has considered not selling physical goods outside the US...

FWIW (very little, I know), had the What's O.L.D. is N.E.W. Kickstarter not offered the option to get the physical books, albeit by paying extra for shipping, then I absolutely would not have backed the project.