Government deal with post office makes mailing books cheaper

Mailing books in Spain just got cheaper thanks to a deal between the president of Correos (the Spanish postal service), Juan Manuel Serrano Quintana, and the Minister of Culture, José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes. 

The agreement, signed on Wednesday in Spain's National Library in Madrid, is designed to support local book shops and encourage reading in the wider population. Specifically, the initiative will help independent bookshops either launch or expand their digital commerce presence. The Ministry and the post office will offer both logistical support and tools for online book selling at a "more competitive" price.

Correos will provide independent book shops with a number of logistical tools to help them enter the digital commerce sector, allowing them to sell their physical books via different channels with favourably low mailing costs. In summary, it will provide them with a new sales channel.

According to Uribes, the aim of the new agreement is to “lower the mailing costs faced by bookshops... and to promote universal access to culture, with special consideration for elderly people who are stuck at home, sick or in rural areas of Spain; and to encourage reading, which is what sets us all free”.

The president of Correos, for his part, underlined the company's delight at being able to “contribute to driving business for the small bookshops, which are currently facing an uncertain future”, adding that it was “especially gratifying to be able to make all our logistical capacity and digital experience available to small and medium-sized business promoting culture”.