Grist Acquires Assets Of Environmental Magazine ‘Pacific Standard’ (mediapost.com)

Bauer Media Group has posted its annual circulation figures for its UK Publishing business for 2023. The figures show that Bauer’s portfolio of brands retained their significant newsstand sales while continuing to expand their digital presence. Commenting on the results, Chris Duncan, Bauer Media’s CEO of UK Publishing said: “We are extremely proud to see Bauer retain its position as the UK’s biggest publisher of consumer magazines with a set of results that demonstrate the wide reach of our brand portfolio, both in print and digitally. Our continued position as the leader across many markets is a true testament to our teams’ ability to produce content that consistently attracts highly engaged and loyal audiences.” “A heartfelt thanks goes out to all our hardworking teams, retailers and advertisers, and our millions of loyal readers. Bauer remains committed to working with our partners to continue to innovate and evolve our exceptional content in 2024.”

USPS postage rates are set to increase on July 10, 2022. This is a large increase. Our last postage rate increase was in August of 2021, which was also a historic rate increase. It’s not all bad news in that direct mail still is very effective and driving response, we just have to get more creative to save on postage. So, what do the new rates that mean for you? The biggest takeaway from these rate changes is that presorted first class mail and flats are growing more and more expensive. Flats do have better ROI than letter size pieces even at increased postage though, so make sure you take that into consideration before you choose to no longer send flat size mail.

The Book Manufacturers’ Institute (BMI) released the March results for its monthly survey on capacity and lead times for soft cover and hard cover books. This month’s survey also featured an update to the questions, factoring in both digital and offset printing methods. In looking at digital printing, the average hard cover capacity rose to 65%, up from 59%. Lead time for digital hard cover books dropped from 21 days to 17 days. Digital soft cover books are running at 67% capacity and 15 days lead time. Both of those numbers are similar to February numbers. According to responses regarding offset printing, hard cover manufacturers are running at 66% of their capacity, which is 10% less than last month. Lead times are slightly down from 40 days to 37. The average soft cover offset capacity usage is down to 78% from 82%. Offset soft cover lead time is up from 27 days to 35 days, reversing a trend of dropping times.