What is the cheapest way to ship books from India to the US?

Around 6-7 years back I used to do a lot of "bookrings" - someone would post on the http://bookcrossing.com forums looking for people who want to read a book they had, and then form a chain of interested people. Each person would receive the book, finish it and then send it on to the next person, till the last reader mailed it back to the original owner. I read a whole bunch of books like this. Shipping books internationally by air can get almost as expensive (if not more) than buying the book though, so I looked for a cheaper option. I found an obscure service by the India Post, surface mail. This is a really cheap but very very slow method of sending books internationally (books have taken anything between several weeks to several months to travel to/from USA and Europe). It's rarely used now, so post office staff are often ignorant. We used to go to the Kolkata GPO and explain the whole thing to the staff there; sometimes we would have to tell them where that stamps etc were kept in their own office!

If the books are not heavy, you can use Zaldee http://www.zaldee.com to find someone who can help. Here people have posted their journeys and available excess baggage space and are ready to carry stuff . Reaches fast and economical... Just check it out.. If you are not bothered about shipping cost, you can try DHL or Fedex

1. One Dunia International Courier http://www.onedunia.com 2. SpeedX Courier http://www.speedxcourier.com 3. Royal Express Courier http://www.royalexpress.in