‘W Magazine’ To Increase Newsstand Price, Decrease Frequency

The United States Postal Service reported new delivery performance metrics showing the average time to deliver a mailpiece across the postal network remained stable at 2.7 days between the period Jan. 1 and Jan 21. The Postal Service continues to implement mitigation plans due to recent winter storms to move mail and packages effectively with First-Class Mail performance showing steady signs of improvement over the second week of January. Additional second quarter service performance scores covering Jan.1 through Jan. 21 included: *First-Class Mail: 86.9 percent of First-Class Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 2.2 percentage points from the fiscal first quarter. *Marketing Mail: 91.7 percent of Marketing Mail delivered on time against the USPS service standard, a decrease of 1 percentage point from the fiscal first quarter. *Periodicals: 80.6 percent of Periodicals delivered on time against the USPS service standard, consistent with performance from the fiscal first quarter.

News Corporation announced that the Company’s Board of Directors, following the receipt of letters from K. Rupert Murdoch and the Murdoch Family Trust, has formed a Special Committee composed of independent and disinterested members of the Board to begin exploring a potential combination with Fox Corporation. The Special Committee, consistent with its fiduciary duties and in consultation with its independent financial and legal advisors, will thoroughly evaluate a potential combination with Fox. The Special Committee has not made any determination with respect to any such potential combination at this time, and there can be no certainty that the Company will engage in such a transaction.

No matter which way you look at it, sales of mass market paperbacks have been in steady decline since 2017. NPD BookScan data shows that unit sales fell 31.5% in 2021 compared to 2017, while the Association of American Publishers put the decline in dollar sales at a more disturbing 42.7% in 2020. Both data sets show more declines occurring in 2022. To be sure, the mass market paperback format has experienced ups and downs in the past. The last time PW wrote about the prospects for mass market paperbacks, in October 2014, the format was trying to recover from the shock it suffered due to the explosion of cheap e-books, especially in such important areas as romance and science fiction and fantasy. (Asked last week, during the DOJ’s trial to prevent PRH from acquiring S&S, whether he had made reductions in title output following the Random House–Penguin merger in 2013, PRH CEO Markus Dohle pointed to adjusting the number of mass market paperbacks published by Berkley/NAL in response to the flood of 99¢ and $1.99 self-published e-books that hit the market, luring away readers of genre fiction.)