They have estimated shipping prices on this page depending on shipment location and weight: MANDARAKE | Shipping Options
Also, you should be able to see the weight of the books on their product pages.
I went back and checked. The set I bought was 1735g and shipped to the US for 2,490 yen, so it matches with the estimated price on that page.
I did end up buying some stuff… and one thing I did notice was if the invoice was coming later, they did not ask for a full payment method at checkout, while the shop that provided the full price immediately did ask me to enter my card number, etc. (the multiple shops aspect is the major caveat about the cheap rarer books idea…)
So they at least shouldn’t be able to actually force you to pay, and I would assume (?) they wouldn’t actually ship the thing until the invoice went through (and you paid it). (but I don’t know about the cancellation aspect yet)
Thanks for the details @harundoom and @rodan. There are a few older / out of print manga I may try buying from there eventually. But I’m not in a rush, so I’ll probably hold off for a while.
Finished 伯爵と妖精 7! With this series I want to read it at every opportunity and I forget other things exist. I went to my 読んでる本 page to mark it completed and that was when I remembered that I am reading other things as well. Therefore I am going to try to read last week’s and this week’s worth of すべてがFになる before I start 伯爵と妖精 8. It’d be nice if I could finish 日常 v1, and maybe read some on other things in progress, but I will be (hopefully) realistic and limit my goal to catching up with すべてがFになる. 
1 あいつは優雅な大悪党: mythical sword and merpeople
2 あまい罠には気をつけて: fog man and kidnappings
3 プロポーズはお手やわらかに: proposals, kelpies, moonstone
4 恋人は幽霊: spirits/possession, medium, selkies
5 呪いのダイヤに愛をこめて: diamonds and goblins
6 取り換えられたプリンセス: pirates, changelings, dragons
7 涙の秘密をおしえて: banshees, death omens, betrayal
8 駆け落ちは月夜を待って: ?
If I had to choose a favorite (which I don’t, but just to think about it, okay), it would probably be #6… or #4, or #3… or #5 or #2. #1 I didn’t have a grasp on anything yet and didn’t realize how much I was enjoying it until the climax (which was glorious, which is a tendency of all these books [to me]), while #7, while I enjoyed it very much, was maybe a little too painful to be a favorite, lol. I’m hoping some of that pain pays off in #8!!
After you submit the order they will check the bookshelves and send you an email with a link to your order summary.
Here’s what they wrote
The invoice with the payment link for the available item(s) will be sent within 3 days, including the shipping and any handling fees.
If the item(s) you ordered is/are not in stock, a cancellation notice will be sent.
If you do not receive an invoice or cancellation notice after 3 days, please contact us by replying directly to this email.
Please note that if your order contains pre-order items, the invoice will be sent after all items are released.With the exception of SAL Small Packet, you can purchase extra shipping insurance.
For more details, please refer to:
MANDARAKE | Shipping Insurance
If you wish to add insurance on your order, please let us know before you make payment so we can update your invoice.
- Mandarake will not be responsible for any damage or the loss of uninsured shipments and undervalued packages.
Paid orders are final and will be shipped accordingly.
No alterations can be made once orders have been paid
As far as I remember you could still cancel or change the order but perhaps you’d have to send them and email because their horrible site doesn’t make anything easy.
Regarding the price for shipping you can estimate it using the box sizes. The book dimensions are usually specified on the item page. As for the weight, I found a book with similar dimensions at home and weighed it. A B6 format novel weighs around 300-350 grams.
Also keep in mind that ordering from separate stores seems to create separate orders, so I don’t think they will aggregate your orders into a single shipment. But this is something I’m not sure about myself.
In case somebody is up for some (maybe) non-manga (maybe) non-lightnovel reading material, we currently have a poll going in the Advanced book club 
The authors that are currently in the top spots are Murakami Haruki and Dazai Osamu, so if you want to join in (or want to swing the vote in another direction) please feel free!
And I promise that when the latter wins, I will run a follow-up club where we read Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (I guess not in Japanese, though 
).
I tried to read that in English and gave up half way through 
Also, completely unrelated, but I came here to mention that 里心 just showed up in my current book. It’s no 魑魅魍魎, but it’s still fun to come across.
I would of course read it in the original language 
I might as well try that. It’s not like I could understand less.
I’m super rusty but I did study German for 8 years, too.
Quick! Take a picture and resurrect all the 里心 threads!
I’m impressed! (Maybe others would want to join in as well? )
In the meantime, you could practice your German and reading Nietzsche with the book’s wikipedia page which already sounds quite confusing to me, so maybe I won’t be able to hold up to my promise after all…
First sentence and I already had to look up a word (dichterisch)
(I’m saying that, but I expected much worse actually)
Edit: reading further, okay, yeah, that’s the level of rust I expected. Pretty much need to look up a word or two in every sentence. It’s doable but not fun.
From a Mandarake invoice by the way:
- The payment is due in 5 days.
(If this is the second time you have received this email due to an order change, it is due 5 days from the first time you received the invoice email).Your order may be canceled if the payment is not made within that period.
If you have any problems with your payment, please contact us as soon as possible by replying directly to this email.
Please be aware that customers who have too many order cancellations due to request or non-payment may become blocked from shopping with us in the future.
So it sounds like it would just be replying to the invoice “Sorry, I underestimated the shipping, can you cancel” or something. I’m sure they’d be understanding about that from a new customer or occasionally, just not if if it keeps happening.
And yeah, no indication that I noticed about any kind of possibility for consolidating the orders before shipping. The original pricing is so drastically cheaper than “lone Japanese-language listing on American Amazon” pricing, which has been my last resort sometimes in the past, that I don’t mind too terribly, but this is one order where the shipping ends up more expensive than the actual books.
Hoping with this I’ll have cleared out my last “actively annoyed this isn’t more widely available” cases and won’t be drawn back with temptation very often…
Don’t we need to read the bible first to truly get how everything relates? 
Ah, sounds like you’re volunteering for an executive summary
Haha, I wouldn’t believe you without the proof. All the Japanese spouses from other threads say this word is never used😆
My resolve to wait on 伯爵と妖精 8 failed perhaps an hour after making it, but it turns out it’s a volume of short stories, so I feel like there might still be hope to catch up on the book club in-between, maybe. I’m usually impatient with these kinds of volumes but already I am really enjoying this one. For one thing: リディア/ケルピー backstory!!!
I finished the second volume of the infamous 新妹魔王の契約者 . I had bought them physical in Japan when I was younger and it was exciting . The art style is super high quality (nitroplus), but exceedingly エロい. It is so ridiculous it’s hard to take seriously, so it was actually a fun read 
. Plot was surprisingly good, and the main character wasn’t annoying. I think two volumes is enough for now, although they had a sale on BW for 100 yen each volume (the final volume got released after a long hiatus) so I have them all there.
Book had a surprising amount of furigana, sometimes even excessively. The author also tended to gravitate towards writing everything usually in hiragana in kanji (like 勿論、筈、等、僅かな、かも知れない). Pretty straightforward read; I’d recommend it even for less experienced readers and who aren’t avert to raunchy scenes.
