CANAV Flat Rate Pricing - Our Shipping Explained

Posted by Matthew Milberry on

The Short Story

The price of a book is at the bottom of the description, and includes three shipping destinations: Canada, USA and International.  The prices for each are all-in prices, covering taxes and shipping.

CANAV Books Shipping Example

The price shown everywhere else is the price excluding shipping.  Shipping is calculated during checkout, and the final price for each book matches the all-in price at the bottom of the book's description.

The all-in price is per book.  For one book, the price is 1x; two books is 2x, etc.

All shipping is via Canada Post surface mail.

All prices are in Canadian Dollars (CDN$).

The Long Story

The cost of shipping is priced into the all-in price of each book, but the way it appears in the store may not be obvious.  This attempts to explain it.

First, you may have noticed how we price our books - we use tax-in, flat-rate pricing.

Second, we use Canada Post ground shipping.  It's not fancy, but it works.

Third, the implicit shipping cost is per book.  The cost of one book is 1x the all-in price; two books is 2x the all-in price, etc.

Now, on to the details of how our shipping works, and what you'll see on this site.

We have used all-in, flat-rate pricing for a long time on our physical marketing.  When you're filling in a paper form for your order it simplifies the math when adding up your order total.

On this site we use Shopify for ecommerce, and we have tried to replicate our traditional pricing here. However, this leads to some pricing behaviour that may not be as transparent as we'd like.

I'll use Aviation in Canada: The Noorduyn Norseman, Vol.2 in the 2021 Spring Specials as an example.

CANAV Books Shipping Example

Shipping Within Canada

If you are shipping to Canada, everything works the way you'd expect: you see the tax-in, flat-rate book price ($85.00):

When shipping is calculated at checkout, you'll see that it's Free because it's included in the base price.

So far, so good.  But what about shipping outside of Canada?

For shipping purposes, we divide the world into three regions: Canada, the United States, and International.  All of our shipping flat-rate, but the way it's set it up in Shopify is not as transparent as we'd like, so we'll clarify here.

Shipping to the United States

In this example, the all-in price to ship to the United States is $90.00. So, the shipping cost you'll see when you check out is ($90.00 - $85.00) = $5.00.

International Shipping

International shipping is anywhere outside of Canada and the United States. 

In this example, the all-in price to ship internationally is $115.00.  So, the shipping cost you'll see when you check out is ($115.00 - $85.00) = $30.00.

Summary

The all-in price of every book is in the book description. 

  1. For each book, multiply the all-in price by the number of copies you want
  2. Add up the cost of each book you want.
  3. Done!  This is your total cost, inclusive of tax and shipping.

Shipping is calculated when checking out and shows shipping separately, but the total cost will be the same as the sum of the all-in prices.

Questions?  Contact us and let us know.