The State of Shipping in 2026

2026 has been an absolute ride for us - both as a business and as a fulfilment and shipping provider for multiple independent producers. We sent an email out to the folks we work with to inform them of changes to our pricing structure. In the interests of transparency, we'll share a slightly editorialised version of that email below.

The top line:

  1. We are turning EU shipping back on, but duties paid shipping will only apply to a limited selection of member-states for the time being. We’ll ship duties unpaid to the remaining EU countries.
  2. We're raising our prices considerably to cover multiple increases to shipping costs we’ve seen this year; more details below. 
  3. We're moving to Tracked services by default. 

To give context: our prices have largely remained the same for the last two years as I started off literally packing zines in my bedroom (in the current incarnation of Peregrine Coast Press, anyway). It's safe to say that the business has grown considerably over the last two years as we moved into an actual studio, and then again into a small warehouse. At the same time, the size and complexity of the projects we've been trusted with have been growing - we’re no longer handling just zines, but hardbacks (and sometimes multiples of them), boxsets, dice, and other fun-shaped bits which require extra labour and packaging which is considerably more expensive than our current pricing was built to support.

There's also a lot of publishers! We want to keep supporting independent publishing but our space constraints are getting very real. The next step up in warehousing means our costs will rise again, and quite considerably. We're also a team of 3 - I work full time, while Jamila and Laura do roughly 2 days each. Payroll, taxes, VAT, accounting, rent, National Insurance, and employee benefits are all part of the maths now and my maths two years ago didn't quite imagine we'd be employing staff and renting a warehouse. I want to be in a position where we can pay for more staff time, a bigger warehouse, and provide a better service to everyone we work with (and God knows our inbox and response times have been an ongoing issue!). 

Nobody's getting rich here, but we've been burning the candle at both ends for most of this year and I don't want to burn my staff out. We tried to compete with larger warehouses on price but they (often) underpay their staff and get a lot more space for their money than we do, while requiring minimum weekly order volumes that I think few people in our industry can hit. We want to support independent publishing as best we can, while acknowledging that boutique services like ours are boutique for a reason: it's a lot of fucking work nobody likes doing.

In the last year, we’ve tried to absorb costs where possible: Royal Mail introduced higher fuel surcharges (13% right now as opposed to 6% last year), packaging suppliers increased their prices (also due to fuel shortages), the EU removed de minimis thresholds, US tariffs change week-to-week, and PPWR registration is quite costly on a country-to-country basis. We’re GSPR-registered which means we get the joy of paying for the registration and paying for the required contact information in every parcel. We passed UK earnings thresholds (yay!) but now have to register for UK VAT, which means our accountant is also graciously charging us more (and our UK clients will now be paying VAT on our invoices). 

To that end, we're simplifying the way we operate. I have created a new rate card (to save me making custom quotes every time) that we'll be updating twice a year as our supplier costs change. We're changing our baseline fee from £1.50/order to £3/order, and charging 50p per additional pick above 1.

We're changing to Tracked shipping services by default. Hopefully this gives your customers peace of mind and reduces the customer service inbound for both you and us. The rate card also includes a little quote generator at the bottom that you can use to work out the total costs we will charge you. You'll be glad to know that, as the EU keeps shooting itself in the foot, we still remain the smallest chunk of your shipping cost.

We're also limiting the number of EU countries we ship duties paid to. Right now, the admin and paperwork required to make EU shipping is quite intense (especially as new PPWR requirements come in). We're going to switch to using Royal Mail's Duties Paid offering, which consolidates all of the admin work of the above while increasing prices ever so slightly. Sadly, it does limit the EU countries we can provide "friendly" shipping for, but the key markets we ship to the most are all included (Germany, Spain, France). These are the countries we can keep providing duties paid shipping to: 

  • Austria
  • Bulgaria
  • Cyprus
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Finland
  • France
  • Germany
  • Italy
  • Luxembourg
  • Malta
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Portugal
  • Slovakia
  • Spain
  • Switzerland
  • Sweden 

We will still ship to the remaining EU countries, but customers in those countries will have to pay duties fees at the border. Royal Mail is working on growing this list (and is making progress on this - we’ve been thinking about switching to this service for a while but the list has only become viable recently) so we hope to support more countries as RM adds them. 

We’re going through a lot of growing pains right now, and I appreciate your patience with us so far. The EU malarkey definitely isn’t helping - when I went to film school, I certainly wasn’t expecting warehouse management and international trade law to be in my future. We’re learning a lot every week and I’m intensely grateful to be able to do it in an industry I love, thanks to the hard work and frankly insane publishing efforts from all of you. 

In solidarity, 

Eryk

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