I just subscribed to some magazines at a price of $3.84 for 12 issues. That got me wondering… How much does a magazine publisher pay to mail their magazine to me? I realize that the magazine gets a significant portion of their revenue from advertising, but it seems that $3.84 would barely cover postage.
So, for example, how much does it cost the publishers of Time or Newsweek to have the US Postal service deliver their magazine? Thanks.
Here are the upcoming rates:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9887933/
Magazines get most of their money from advertising. Subscription rates are meant to be artifically low to boost circulation numbers.
You’re damn right on that. For advertising-based magazines the subscription price is pretty much a number set to make the reader feel a little ownership of the pub and thus feel personal pressure to read it to get value for the money. The cost is irrelevant.
Note, however, that the prices above can be altered if the pubs are particularly heavy or have too high a percentage of advertising.
The mags are not only going for subscription numbers but are trying to pump up their demographics. If they somehow know you to be in a high demographic catagory or live in a postal zone with high demographics they will almost give you the magazine for nothing. That way they can try to skew their demographic averages to make them look more favorable to potential advertisers. 100,000 unemployable, disfunctional lowlifes can be offset with one billionaire.
What the heck, that’s the game.
I agree with your overall point but not this part in not true. Demographic income data is almost always reported as median income (the middle value picked out of a sorted list) in order to avoid this effect. If the value used was the mean, then Bill Gates could make a small town look fabulously wealthy just by moving there but the median avoids that type of misleading bias.
It’s also worth noting that there are separate rates for “business” periodicals (e.g, Time, produced by Time, Inc.; Analog, which I think is still Ziff-Davis; Ladies Home Journal; and so on) and “nonprofit” periodicals (which in addition to obvious stuff like American Legion Magazine and Journal of the International Herpetological Association, includes things like National Geographic, Natural History, Cat Fancy, etc.) Nonprofits get significantly lower rates, though exactly how much lower, it’s been years since I’ve investigated.
I exagerated too much to make the point. To be more serious, if the publication’s demograhics need improving in order to attract more advertising (or a segment of advertising) they will run a campaign to secure subscribers whose demographics will improve the numbers. They will buy mailing lists or secure other lists and make a deal that is a real money loser for them in the circulation sense but helps their demographic profile. Every publication has its needs or some image of itself that it wants to portray to its advertisers so they have to manipulate the circulation game. That’s why you will see such wide swings in subscription costs.
There’s also the “rate base” game but someone else can get into that.
Many years ago I worked for a publisher/distribution company and 90% of their business was from national magazines. There are 2 ways that large circulation magazines distributed.
Example 1: TV Guide prints all there own magazines and back then there was over 600 versions depending on the target location. Those destined for the greater Pugetopolis in Washington state would be trucked in, we would apply the address labels then deliver them to the the 21 postal distribution centers in Western Washington. From there the USPS takes over and delivers a fresh copy to each subscriber. We also delivered to all the grocery store distribution centers for those that buy their copy while shopping. While most folks got their copy a few days before the published date, me and my family had ours about a month early.
Example 2: The company I worked for printed and distributed Sports Illustrated each week. SI sent out the proofs early Tuesday morning, we had them by noon. Local advertising was added and by Wednesday we were printing. By Thursday all were boxed and delivered to the USPS or retail distribution centers for the Saturday release. Besides SI, this company printed over 100 other weekly and monthly magazines.
In both cases, the cost of postage is relatively small because the magazine does not travel long distances with the USPS. With the Zip +4 system, the publisher/distributor can deliver can package each magazine delivery down to you local mail delivery persons route. That keeps the postage costs low for the magazine publishers.
While I can’t verify that is truly the case, it may help explain why I have gotten offers recently for upscale mags for ridiculously low prices (1 year New Yorker for $12, 1 yr Playboy for $8, Wired for $5). I moved from an area low on the demographic desireability scale to one at the top, and when my subs ran out, I began to get offers I couldn’t refuse.
And that doesn’t even include the free mags (most of mine are offered free, but that may be because of specialties). The free ones still have to pay postage, but have no income other than advertising. Yet they are slick, not junk rags.