9 Cost-Cutting Guides for Publishers

The folks doing the "A Crash Course in Cost Cutting" at tomorrow's Publishing Executive Conference have put together a great list of helpful articles.

They asked me to post the list to make it easy on the attendees and to avoid unnecessary handouts. I'm happy to do so because the list has some great resources for my readers (and also happens to include three articles by yours truly):

1. “7 Tips for Analyzing Print Prices”: Alex Brown demonstrates that there's more to analyzing printing proposals that simply comparing Price A to Price B. Publishing Executive magazine.



2. “Paper Options: Looking Good Without Breaking the Bank” : Folio: magazine discusses how it saved money on paper and how other publishers can as well.



3. “16 Ways to Save Money on Your Print Jobs”: Margie Dana of Boston Print Buyers provides a list that is especially well suited to sheetfed printing.



4. “US Paper Price Index”: Charts the market prices for LWC and SCA paper.



5. "Dos and Don'ts of Buying Paper": Multichannel Merchant's advice for cataloguers is just as relevant for magazine publishers.



6. “Heavier Paper Can Save Money”: Dead Tree Edition shows that lighter paper isn't always cheaper -- and offers a free model for calculating the total cost (paper and distribution) of papers with different basis weights.



7. "Co-Mail Confusion: Do you know how much you’re really saving?”: Steven W. Frye unravels the complexities of calculating co-mail costs and savings for Publishing Executive magazine.



8. "How About Some Free Printing": Dead Tree Edition shows how much money some publishers are leaving on the table by not co-mailing.



9. “The Conde Nast Protection Acts”: Dead Tree Edition explains the new Periodicals rates that will take effect in May, including a handy summary of the changes to each rate. The article also shows that the heaviest publications will get the smallest postage increases -- thus the Conde Nast reference.