‘Luxe’ Magazine Celebrates 15 Years With Redesign (mediapost.com)

Publishers who still mail print editions to subscribers are facing challenges on at least a couple of fronts. For one, new statistics released by the U.S Postal Service show that 86.1% of Periodicals were delivered on time against the USPS service standard in Q4, a decrease of 2.8% from the prior quarter. In contrast, 91.4% of first class mail was delivered on time, a 1.2% decrease, and marketing mail held steady with a 95.2% on-time delivery rate. This may or may not have any real impact. But in a related development, U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is speaking out against recent postal policy changes that she says are hurting local and rural newspapers.

Fueled by huge gains for a host of Dr. Seuss titles, as well as solid results for several new books, unit sales of print books soared 34.2% in the week ended Mar. 6, 2021, over the comparable week in 2020, at outlets that report to NPD BookScan. Unit sales jumped 57.9% in juvenile fiction over the week ended Mar. 8, 2020, as Dr. Seuss titles took eight of the top 10 spots on the category list. The Cat in the Hat led the way, selling about 105,000 copies in the week, compared to 22,000 copies in the first week of March last year. Green Eggs and Ham followed, selling about 90,000 copies, trailed by One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (88,000); Oh, the Places You’ll Go! (74,000); and Fox in Socks (64,000). Interest in these books was heightened by the announcement by Dr. Seuss Enterprises that it will stop printing six other Dr. Seuss titles written between 1937 and 1976 because of concerns that they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

Keep US Posted, an alliance consisting of consumer interests, industry groups, newspapers, nonprofits and businesses, applauds the U.S. House Committee on Appropriations for directing the Postal Regulatory Commission, which governs the U.S. Postal Service, to study the impact of planned postage increases. The Committee’s action, included in the 2023 spending package, is a direct response to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s announcement that stamp prices will increase July 31 and every six months thereafter, despite this year’s bipartisan postal reform law designed to fiscally stabilize the Postal Service and prevent unnecessary postage hikes. “It is destructive for Postal Service leadership to squeeze every last drop of revenue from the mail at the expense of the American people,” said Keep US Posted Executive Director and former Congressman Kevin Yoder (R-Kans.). “In just a decade, Americans could be paying well over $1 to mail a single letter. Using the mail will become unaffordable for American families, as well as newspapers, nonprofits, and businesses that depend on the Postal Service. These excessive postage increases will decrease volume and revenue so much that it will ultimately hurt the Postal Service’s 650,000 workers and their ability to keep delivering for our country. Projected mail decline will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.