I find even professional booksellers on eBay send me books that are killed in transit by gravity and stupidity. Then they bitch and moan when I say they’re ignorant and unprofessional.

Maybe I ought to jot down what needs to happen:

Wrap the book in plain paper or plastic, snugly. This keeps the binding from getting torqued, and the text block from opening inside the shipping container. If you use newspaper, this will stain the covers. If you wrap loosely (for instance with a plastic shopping bag), the book will still manage to open.

Do this even if you’re using a tight-fitting bubble envelope. Do it even if you’re only sending one book. Do it for sure if you’re sending more than one.

You don’t have to use loads of tape to wrap the books, or heavy kraft paper, or anything like that unless you’re wrapping a stack of loose pamphlets or something. You’re not armor-coating the thing, just helping its natural strength survive the inevitable bounces and blows and sliding that happens in transit. Remember: books are made of wood.

Don’t leave any void space around the book(s) in the shipping container. Whether it’s an envelope, or a box, or a box full of envelopes, fill the space. Don’t leave room for the book(s) to shift around inside the package.

If you’re having any doubt, test your work by dropping the package from a 2-foot height before it leaves your office. If anything moves, if the newspaper shifts or gets flattened, if the book slides out from between your Amazon pillows, if the styrofoam peanuts slide out of the way… you’re not done.

If you’re using a fragile shipping container, like an envelope or Kraft paper, you may not want to use void fill. But you may need to protect the book(s) from being bumped. Assume the envelope will get thrown around, literally, five or ten times before I see it. Somebody along the way will pitch it ten feet or more, and it’ll land in a pile, and more heavy crap will be dropped on top of it. If your envelope doesn’t seem like enough to protect the book from that, get a cardboard box and cut it into a reinforcement of some kind.

Especially if you’re shipping a softcover or magazine in wraps, stiffeners are your friends. Review the preceding paragraphs about getting thrown, stacked, and piled, and add bent, twisted and torn to the list.

Finally, a special word on packing multiple books: Bound volumes will do everything they can to kill each other when you stick them into a box together. Several times (including today, thanks to the newest bastard idiot) I’ve opened a 20-pound box that used to contain six or eight heavy volumes from 150 years ago, only to find a loose pile of shredded pages and some rounded boards. Boxes of books that get dropped rub the books together, and eventually they give. Before the box does.

And that pisses me off and makes me very very sad, when I thought I was buying a big set of something instead of a box of fucking confetti.