eBay now allowing Media Mail in other categories?

[lux.ra_14]

Sold a railroad book under the category Collectibles/Transportation/Railroadiana/Books. I had selected MM for shipping but fully expected it to be grayed out on the shipping page, since the item was listed outside one of the standard book categories. But that wasn't the case, and I was able to use MM -- unlike in the past, when I would just use Pirateship to print the label.

Is this something new for book subcategories? Always had MM grayed out in the past when listing books in other categories (railroad,  Civil War, etc.)

[nobody*s_perfect · Accepted solution]

A few months ago, an eBay staff member mentioned that they were working on fine-tuning access to MM labels, including adding access in eligible sub-categories such as "Books" under other category topics such as Transportation and Photography.

[mike_jayroe]

Ever since I joined E-bay in March 2022 and learned about media mail, every book I shipped I used media mail and never had a problem. That includes books on railroads and NASCAR. Hope I didn't mess up by mis-using MM.

[nobody*s_perfect]

If they were books (without ads) then you didn't mess up.  

eBay used to allow sellers to purchase Media Mail postage labels for any item.  Then in an effort to reduce the abuse of MM, eBay limited label purchase to categories in which all or most items were clearly eligible, such as Books and CDs.  But this left some sellers unable to purchase MM labels for books which were not listed in the Books category, even when the SUBcategory was specifically for Books.  The sellers who were inconvenienced by this spoke up, and eBay began their efforts to examine subcategories and make MM available in subcategories where all or more items were eligible for MM.