When 30 Equals 33: America's Bizarre Methods of Calculating the Weight of Paper

My fellow Americans mostly seem allergic to anything having to do with the metric system. Can’t remember how many teaspoons go into a tablespoon? Is our country falling behind in science because we’re handicapping our kids with the “English” measurement system. Doesn’t matter.

 “WAM: We ain’t metric!” my countrymen kneejerk. After all, if you give those socialist, one-world-government Europeans 2.54 centimeters, they’ll take 1.60934 meters.

But when it comes to specifying the weight of paper, even some red-blooded Americans throw up their hands and say “What’s that in GSM?”

There’s never been a better time for U.S. buyers of graphic paper to understand what GSM (grams per square meter) means – and how messed up our own system of basis weights is.

Publishing Executive just published a piece I wrote noting that U.S. prices for magazine-quality paper are at record high levels in comparison with European prices. That means it’s a great time to look overseas for paper, especially since North American mills are gearing up to raise prices again in July. But to get the best deals, you might need to understand how the rest of the world talks about paper weight.

I’m reminded of a colleague’s story about buying 33# SCB paper (lower quality than coated paper but better than newsprint) from a non-U.S. mill. When the shipment arrived at a U.S. printing plant, the printer notified my colleague of an error: The rolls were marked “30#” (pronounced “30 pound”), indicating the paper was about 9% lighter and thinner than intended.

The mill’s sales office had correctly translated the order from 33# to the more universally understood 48.9 gsm. But the mill was only used to making newsprint for U.S. customers, so it thought 48.9 gsm translated to 30# in Americanese. The paper was OK; the label was just wrong.

From Catalyst Paper's "How We Make Paper"

A page of 30# newsprint, you see, weighs the same as a 33# page of magazine-quality paper (and of other publication grades that use the “book, text, offset” method of calculating basis weight).But two same-sized sheets of 48.9 gsm always weigh the same, regardless of whether one is copy paper and the other wallpaper or tissue or newsprint.

The U.S. has 11 different systems for calculating the basis weight of paper. Standard resume paper is 20# bond – generally a nice stiff, opaque sheet. It’s also more than 2½ times the weight of 20# coated paper, which is an extremely thin, translucent paper that is likely to be used in dictionaries or Bibles.

Confused? Wait, it gets worse. When magazine publishers refer to 80# cover stock, they usually mean something that, logically enough, is double the weight of the 40# coated paper they might use on their internal pages. The rest of the world would say the publisher is using 59 gsm text stock and 118 gsm cover stock.

But “80# cover” can also refer to paper that is measured based on the “cover” method of calculating basis weight rather than the “book, text, offset” method. It weighs 216 gsm. Thus, even when Americans are speaking to Americans, a request to use 80# cover stock can easily result in the pressroom printing covers that are too heavy for the saddle stitchers that are supposed to bind the publication and too expensive for the publisher's budget.

Many overseas mills are accustomed to making paper for U.S. customers, knowing, for example, that 40# coated paper should be 59.26 gsm. And if they make a lot of paper for U.S. customers on a steady basis, they might actually make a “true 40#” that is indeed targeted at 59.26 gsm.

But rather than manufacturing a special batch of paper for the U.S. market, many mills will just make 60 gsm, which is a common weight for European magazine papers that comes out to 40.5# in Americanese. That results in using more paper and having higher postage and freight costs versus true 40#. But it’s not a reason to avoid overseas paper.

For my fellow American buyers of magazine grades like coated and supercalendered papers, as well as for book papers, here’s the key formula: 0.675 gsm is equivalent to 1# of basis weight. European mills typically offer weights that are about 1.3% above the U.S. equivalents – e.g. 45 gsm (30.38#) in place of 30#, 51 gsm (34.43#) in place of 34#, or 60 gsm in place of 40#.

A good rule of thumb is that such weight differences will cost publishers about 2%, a bit more if the copies are mostly mailed, a bit less if many are sent via the newsstand system. So if I’m buying 40# coated #5 paper for 40 cents per pound, I might consider a price of 39.20 cents for 60 gsm to be competitive, but not a bargain.

And since that 60 gsm was recently selling for something like 33 cents in Europe, I know the manufacturer has plenty of incentive to be more than just competitive in the U.S. market.

A footnote about Canadian paper: Canadians have pretty much converted to the metric system, but their mills sell so much paper into the U.S. that they usually spec it to U.S. standards and practices. Thus, Canadian paper is pretty much like U.S. paper except that it occasionally throws in a random “Eh?” at the end of a sentence.

Ten Numbers to Crunch For Cost-Cutting Publishers

Publishers, if you want to save some money, you had better whip out your calculator -- uh, spreadsheet.

Publishers can usually get more savings from changing what they do rather than from getting lower prices on what they already do. Changes that save money can also reduce revenue, so you can't just cut blindly. You need to have a clear picture of both costs and revenues.

Here are calculations that can shed light on money-saving opportunities:

1. Cost Per Copy: That's easy. You just divide your costs by the number of copies, right? NO! That would give you an average cost per copy, but average cost doesn't tell you much. It will mislead you, for example, if your publisher wants to know how much you would save by reducing your ratebase. What you usually need is the incremental cost per copy -- that is, the expenses that result from each additional copy. Such fixed costs as prepress and makereadies are not part of the calculation.
   
   
2. Cost Per Copy By Type of Copy: Production costs are generally the same for each type of copy, but distribution costs can vary widely by method of distribution. A copy that costs 2 cents to send to a domestic newsstand wholesaler might cost 25 cents to mail to a domestic subscriber or $2 to an overseas subscriber. So the potential savings from reducing ratebase might depend upon what type of copies are eliminated. Drill down further and you might discover that you should stop soliciting subscriptions in Hawaii or should raise prices in Canada.
   
   
3. Cost Per Editorial Page: Again, we're talking about incremental cost -- the cost of adding or removing editorial pages. For many publications, more than half the production and distribution costs are insensitive to page count. Because you can't add just one page to a publication (though I've heard people ask why not), you might have to model different scenarios to get a picture of the typical incremental cost per page.
   
   
4. Cost Per Ad Page: The prepress costs per ad page are typically lower than for editorial pages, but the postage costs for U.S. copies can be much higher. In fact, because of the editorial discount, some publishers have a negative postage cost for additional editorial pages.
   
   
5. Inefficient Page Counts: Sometimes you can save money by adding pages because you are moving from an inefficient to an efficient press configuration. If you use 32-page web presses, it can take five presses to print 92 pages but only three to print 96. Knowing that some page counts are inefficient might lead to new makeup rules (e.g. the number of body pages must be divisible by 8) or to greater use of remnant ads, house ads, standby editorial pages, and other methods of adjusting to last-minute changes.
   
   
6. Distribution Cost Per Pound: A lot of publishers are looking at reducing basis weight or changing trim size these days. The paper savings are easy to calculate, but you won't have the full picture unless you know how much you pay in freight and postage for each pound. "Heavier Paper Can Save Money" has more resources on this subject, including the need to adjust for waste and why you might want to break out these costs by type of copy (e.g. newsstand vs. domestic subscriber.
   
   
7. Cost of Versioning: Having different versions of a publication can lead to a variety of additional costs, such as press makereadies, press stops, inefficient press forms, selective binding, and polybagging. Dwarfing all of those for some publications is the hidden impact on postage. Mailing public-place copies separately from subscriber copies, for example, increases piece costs and reduces dropship discounts for both groups. The same thing happens when complimentary copies or copies with special onserts or cover wraps are mailed separately from other copies.
   
   
8. Benefits of Versioning: Having a separate women's edition or putting cover wraps on expiring subscriber copies might be worth the extra cost if they generate enough money. But take a close look. In a time of declining ad pages and reduced ratebases, a versioning program that used to make sense might have outlived its useful life.
   
   
9. Costs of Inserts: There are horror stories about sales reps letting advertisers run supplied inserts for free if they also buy an ad page, under the mistaken assumption that the advertiser bore all the costs of the insert. But whether supplied or "we print", inserts increase a publisher's postage, freight, and bindery costs and often lead to inefficient makeup. That goes for circulation inserts as well.
   
   
10. Inserts Revenue: This is another case of focusing on profitability, not just costs, by seeing whether the revenues justify the expenses.
    

Heavier Paper Can Save Money

Thanks to the U.S. Postal Service, low fuel prices, and the depressed paper market, publishers should take another look at using heavier paper.

Conventional wisdom in the magazine industry (and the catalog industry as well) says that decreasing the basis weight of the paper will decrease costs. But it’s not always true, and it’s becoming even less true.

Freight rates, especially fuel surcharges, have dropped drastically since last summer’s peak oil prices. Most Periodicals mailers will pay less for weight when postal rates increase in May. And the softening paper market will tend to make heavier basis weights more efficient than when paper prices are high.

Consider the case of switching from 34# lightweight coated (LWC) to 36#, which is typically priced $3 per hundredweight lower, or 38# LWC, which is another $3 lower. When 34# prices peaked at about $56/cwt. last year, that meant 36# was at $53 and 38# at $50. Although the heavier weights require more paper, products shipped via inexpensive ground freight (for example, newsstand copies, newspaper inserts, and in-store promotions) had virtually the same or even lower costs (paper and freight combined) at any of those three basis weights.

Mailed copies were a different story. With dropshipped Periodicals mailers paying something like 29 cents per pound in postage and freight last summer, going from 34# to 38# would increase combined paper and distribution costs by 3% to 4%. At today’s freight and paper prices, that gap has closed by a percentage point or two.

Now consider how things will look in a few months, when LWC prices may be $11/cwt. below last year's peak: At an average distribution cost of 15 cents per pound, switching from 34# to 38# would cost nothing. With combined postage and freight costs for dropshipped Periodicals mail down to about 24 cents and newsstand freight at about 7 cents, some publishers with substantial newsstand draws may actually save money by increasing basis weight. (Or they may find their paper suppliers willing to discount 34# more than 38#.)

This knowledge can become especially powerful when considering a move to a less expensive paper grade. Suppose, for example, that a magazine using 45# #4 wants to reduce costs and counter perceptions that its issues are too thin. It could bulk up the book and probably save money by switching to 50# #5.

Or suppose it is considering a money-saving move from LWC to SCA (supercalendered) but is concerned about the latter’s low bulk or opacity. It could counter those drawbacks, and still save money, by switching to heavier SCA.

Here’s another reason to get a handle on how changing basis weight would affect your costs: the euro. With their own currency doing a nosedive and their home market oversupplied, European mills are once again casting longing glances at the U.S. market. But the basis weights from European mills don’t match those of North America exactly. So when a European mill proposes a price on 57 gsm (38.5#) paper, you cannot compare that to a 38# price from a North American mill without knowing how the slightly heavier paper affects your distribution costs.

What about the environmental impact of heavier paper? Some people use a simple rule of thumb that lighter is better because it uses fewer trees, but that is not always true. Lighter groundwood papers often have a higher proportion of chemical (kraft) pulp than heavier papers, and it’s harder to use recycled content in lightweight papers. Increasing basis weight while lowering the grade may make your paper greener if it reduces the bleach, kraft, and energy required to produce the paper.

Standard-class mailers, such as catalogs, face a far different situation than do Periodicals mailers. Below 3.3 ounces, they pay no weight-based postage, but above that they will generally pay more than 40 cents per pound when the new rates take effect in May. That means they can save money by switching a thin flyer from 34# to 38# but would see costs increase significantly if they did that with a full-sized catalog.

But Periodicals and Standard mailers also have something in common: Cataloguers often use heavier paper on newspaper inserts than on copies of the same piece that are mailed, just as some large-circulation magazines start printing their newsstand copies on heavy paper and then switch to a lower basis weight for their subscriber copies of the same issue.

If you would like a simple spreadsheet model for comparing the total cost (paper, freight, and postage) of paper at various basis weights and prices, drop me an email at dead.tree.edition@gmail.com. I can also offer a model for calculating the impact of the new Periodicals rates. I won’t charge you any money for the models as long as you join my LinkedIn network and promise (cross your heart and hope to die) to spread the word about Dead Tree Edition.