Do I understand correctly that Europe (UK) starts getting the packages?
Pawel,
James Lester got it all correct. I'm the "architect" of this shipping madness and believe me, it's working fabulous so far.
All the information has been clearly posted here over the past weeks. But let me reiterate for those that have not been reading or paying attention.
The cost to mail each package as an individual package directly from the USA, using the US Postal Service and then the local Postal Service in your country was astronomical, except for those packages delivered in the USA. Those were sent Media Mail. Media Mail, for the Americans who don't know, used to be called "Book Rate" and is a low cost shipping method for books and certain other media. We were able to ship the books in the USA for about $4 each to USA addresses.
The cost, by contrast to reach Canada was well over $32; the cost for most of EU was $40; and the cost for Australia/PacRim was about $44. On a $65 book, that's a bit "outrageous" as I'm sure you'll agree.
So, the solution was to use the local postal services, and a few volunteers for a "trans-shipping" operation. For all non-USA books, I managed to land them in Canada, Australia, Ireland and UK for just over USD $8 per book by private courier, UPS. Adding the local postage on top of that such as CDN $12 or £3 for UK makes it a bargain. The bulk shipments arrived in days, and the local post so far in Canada and UK is moving them fast as well. I can tell you with certainty if I had mailed them all at once from the USA, they would not yet be starting deliveries; we're seeing 2-4 weeks on things shipped directly from USA. Not cool.
All the Canada packages were posted late last week, and as I write this now, I'm getting numerous emails from Canada Post about deliveries around Canada. James Lester posted all the UK ones late last week as well, and those are beginning to arrive in UK.
Over the next couple of days, the Australian ones will be posted. It is a bit of an effort to get online to each countries postal system, create an account, buy postage, PDF the label, and email to our member-volunteer. It went smoothly so far, just time consuming for Canada and UK. I expect about the same for Australia and EU.
Unfortunately, the EU group--by far the largest quantity--has not yet been delivered to David Robinson in Ireland. The packages are there, and cleared customs, but still waiting delivery.
So, Paweł and others, yours will be in the mail later this week, and I'd imagine delivery by the end of next week.
