Shipping settings for small items-Help me configure-please.

I have a greeting card company and the shipping is configured correctly if a customer only buys one item. However if customer were to buy 2 cards they would be charged twice for shipping. Basically the zen cart is configured to charge shipping on each item $2.50 each. These cards don't weigh much and therefore my customers will be over charged for shipping these items.

Is there a way for me to customize shipping so that its configured depending on how much money a customer spends?

Here is how the well known card company, Papyrus figures out pricing:
http://www.papyrusonline.com/category/help/shipping+&+delivery.do

Another option is to configure shipping according to how many cards a customer buys. Since they all weigh about the same, I can figure that a purchase of 1-4 cards costs $2.50.

THANKS FOR ANY HELP ON THIS ISSUE!!

If you only want to use a single shipping method (ie First Class Mail), then you could set up the Table Rate shipping module based on item count.
For example, if you want to charge:
1-4 cards $2.50
5-8 cards $5
9-12 cards $7.50

12 cards $10
you would set the table rate up as:
4:2.5,8:5,12:7.5,1000:10

If you want to offer more choices of shipping method (is first class mail, priority and express mail), you could download and install the Zones Table Rate (for Multiple Zones) module. It's not very difficult to set up - the same principles apply as for the Table Rate module but you can have more than one active table for each defined zone.

Thanks so much! I am going to try that now.