US Postal mail rate hikes screw micro-publishers: Thanks, Time Warner!
Link, illustration courtesy NYRM. (via Ned Sublette)Ben Scott had better things to do than listen to a bunch of little magazines rant about their unreasonable postage bills. As the policy director of Free Press, a group that specialized in fighting media concentration, he and 10 co-workers in Washington were wrapped up in defending internet accessibility. But in late February 2007, Scott’s phone started buzzing with accusations from panicked publishers of small-circulation magazines. The United States Postal Service, they said, was hammering the last nail in the coffin of independent publishing.
Periodicals with circulations of fewer than 250,000 (some with much fewer—even in the hundreds) had just discovered that the rates they paid the USPS for postage were about to skyrocket, and they had only eight business days to dispute the proposed increase. While these independent publishers had expected the rates to rise, they believed it would be by about 12 percent, which had been the USPS’ own suggestion. However, during an arduous 10 months of hearings on postal rates in 2006, during which the small-magazine community was conspicuously absent, the stakes changed dramatically.
Instead of a simple markup, the entire rate system was overhauled, imposing a cost-based structure on a branch of government originally established to provide a public good, one that the Founding Fathers deemed vital to our democratic society. The Postal System was built on the premise of promoting the free flow of ideas by giving preferential treatment to their most common method of conveyance: the printed pages of periodicals.
Of particular concern to Free Press was the discovery that the biggest force behind the formula by which rates were to be increased was none other than Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the United States, which had been working overtime to influence the outcome of the hearings.
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It was small circulation publications that gained more following step by step that touched off the American Revolution and inspired the ideas of true democracy in the United States.
The free flow of ideas is slowly but surely being stoppered by government legislation and public opinion.
Perhaps the providers and purveyors of these zines will move to the internet.
This is still the end of an era.
So we used to give these rapidly obsolescing media a subsidy, and now we're giving them a somewhat smaller subsidy, and we're supposed to care.
If the small publishers don't like it, perhaps they'd like to try FedEx, or some other private entity that doesn't use public funds to move dead trees around.
I'm all for the culture of the zine, but readers should be willing to pay for it. The way to do this is to go digital, and have the option paper delivery.
Of course, government making decisions to please large corporations is just one big cluster fuck. "Less government good" is pretty much the only consistent opinion out there.
"One of the smallest—and hardest hit—is The Progressive Populist (circulation 19,000)"
Pshaw.
With circulation numbers like that, these aren't 'zines, any more than Locus or the Chronicle are. To see how real 'zines are coping (because they've already been nearly screwed out of existence by past rate increases), check out this site where many 'zines are published as PDFs: http://www.efanzines.com
If this helps reduce the amount of targeted spam I get in my mailbox, I say more power to them.
All the zines I ever bought came regular first class. No subsidies at all.
Greetings
All of us here on the much subsidized intertube system agree 'subsidy is bad' especially when it benefits somebody else /irony...
Enjoy the journey
WarLord
I tried to get an 'online subscription only' from the hoity-toity New York Review of Books (NYRB), but those mental goliaths have neither the means nor the wits to handle free money. However, I am told I can get an online subscription for only $20 a year IF I ALSO subscribe to the ink and paper version. There's apparently no way to talk them into accepting the mad profits to be made by posting and selling digital editions. They're going to go to the expense and trouble of killing those fucking trees for me whether I want them to or not! And NYRB is supposed to be America's leading intellectual journal.
If this helps reduce the amount of targeted spam I get in my mailbox
It won't, Spazzm. That article is about the rate for periodicals. (Did you know that periodicals devoted to agriculture get a special discount? I didn't till just now.)
Junk mail is sent with bulk mail rates, which is an entirely different rate schedule. The US Post Office makes most of its money off of bulk mail, so you'll never get them to shut that spigot.
It would seem like a good opportunity for UPS to come in and humiliate the USPS again.
It seems to me that it is very hard to find the right balance with capitalism. Its almost as if capitalism as an entity has evolved or is evolving into a sort of polytheistic imperialism. Each mega corporation in place of a godhead. Eventually like with the real estate market, We American's will have to trade in some of our material wealth for a different kind of lifestyle. Although I worry a lot about the materialism of the youth culture, I am also somewhat hopeful as well. Tolerance is a sign of divinity, and the younger generation seems to be much more open to change of all sorts. Hopefully they will be able to gracefully transition to a more energy conservative life otherwise, I fear a new bubble will burst.
The postal service takes no, that is zero, tax payer money since 1984. They are required to cover all costs. You want your first class mail delivered cheap to Kodiak, Alaska, then quit bitching about them maximizing revenue.
Dear Iamgeekusa:
What is "America" for?
Dave G., Ivan, Mikelotus,
Stop being pussies. I'm proud to pay taxes, and I'd be happy to pay more in taxes to underwrite the flow of ideas in the US.
Just because the Nation, National Review, the Skeptical Enquirer, Ploughshares, Watchtower, the Independent Review or ZZYZYVA can't afford to pay "fair" price (and if you read the article, it becomes obvious that fair is subjective in this case) that doesn't mean that their activity is not valuable in tangible economic terms.
We don't have a hard and fast measure of worth for fostering debate, disseminating ideas, or keeping an eye on government. But those activities obviously generate wealth, in the form of better industry, better arts, better government, and a better informed citizenry and private sector.
This is something I see the benefits of in my everyday life. For the last hundred years or so, the US has been the richest, coolest, freest nation on earth. We need to fix things here, yeah, but adults invest- time and money- into the future. Man up and drop a penny in the slot.
...What gets me about the postal rates is why the USPS hasn't just declared that gluing a dollar bill on an envelope is the same thing as affixing a stamp escapes me. Then again, if they pulled that off, I could see the Treasury Department finally reissuing the $2 bill and commissioning a $3 featuring Nixon for real so the Postmaster can raise rates again six months later.
Some of these comments here are painfully uniformed. I've been involved in publishing for decades and have personally kept up with rate changes for personal mailings/online-selling and my lord. The last batch of rate changes TRULY screws over the everyday mailer on so many levels.
1) First and foremost, you used to be able to calculate your own postage for items over an ounce by simply weighing them and then adding an additional postage stamp per each ounce past one ounce. So sending out a 3 ounce envelope would be equal to one first class stamp and 2 postcard rate stamps. Can't do that anymore. The rate structure doesn't allow it.
2) Any non-machinable sizes get higher rates even if it's one ounce. The most immediate way average consumers will be affected is—get this—sending out birthday cards and other "squarish" formats. Seriously. That blows my mind. Anyone sending cards out nowadays does it in good faith and wants to keep a tradition alive. Thanks to the U.S.P.S., you are punished with a higher rate. Who thought of that?
3) Because the rates are so crazy and seemingly arbitrary some folks will pay more postage initially when mailing with stamps than wait in line at the post office to find out what the exact rate is. Seriously, an extra 10-20 cents per mailing seems like nothing to a person, but add it up across the nation and you have TONS of people overpaying for services.
4) Sea mail seems to be eliminated. Not 100% on this, but someone else feel free to correct me. But anyway, this means affordable overseas shipping of heavy items for the everyday joe.
5) Also, yes I think printed zines are an anachronism nowadays, but one does have to be concerned about a magazine rack filled with Time Warner sanctioned product. A publication with a circulation of 250,000 might not be a "zine" to some folks, but the reason why Tower Records (back in the day) and other places carried zines of smaller circulation in the first place was because there were larger "anchor" publications that would draw people in.
6) eBay sellers are even more screwed. You know it's simply getting harder to calculate a fair and honest rate for shipping on eBay. And while some would say one should maybe "overcharge" a bit to cover costs, that's not only against eBay rules but is just unfair. So now if I sell some old pack of... ZINES! on eBay I won't be able to give a buyer a solid shipping cost until after I ship? Crazy.
This is really sickening to me because yet another channel for someone to start up is being smothered to death in the name of profits. Also, I'm disturbed at how many entities nowadays find ways to screw everyday consumers out of the extra change one has in everyday life. For example, Metrocards in NYC have rates now that assure you to have some oddball amount that you will NEVER get back but the MTA keeps. Ditto elsewhere.
You'd think with all this technology, there'd be fairer options so small players and larger players can play on the same field. But it seems to be 100% the opposite. Good grief!
add ballast sand to any threshold mail. Might as well get your money's worth. Or sell the excess to spammers.
Note to the digital chirren: 'zines are like blogs on paper. They're what old people used to read before god gave us LiveJournal. Boing Boing once was one
I am not that old... grumble, precious paper copies of BoingBoing I have... mine...
@16, points 4 and 5 are both true. I export small heavy items and the loss of surface shipping really hit me in the pocket. I now have to use air and the shipping is frequently more than 50% of the cost of the product. I'm paying USPS hundreds of dollars more every quarter because they discontinued a service that I relied on. I spent several days last week trying to set up an account with BAX/Schenker for international shipping. It will be cheaper than USPS for items over 50 lbs but vastly more hassle.
And don't get me started about trying to cash a postal money order. They just say 'haven't got the cash' and turn you away. I've carried hundreds of dollars worth of those things around for weeks at a time waiting to catch a Post Office with a few hundred in the till. I expect that from some individuals, but the government ought to have better systems in place for paying their debts in a timely fashion. Point that out to them and just wait for the shrug.
FYI, the silver lining to all of this might mean the growth of some more local distribution and creative communities. If you can't ship, setting up a stand at a local craft fair or flea market might make it worth it.
the government ought to have better systems in place for paying their debts in a timely fashion.
We usually just bomb our creditors.
Man, this is depressing.
Someone give me some good news. About anything.
Jack @16:
This is absolutely correct. It happened in the last rate restructuring, not the current one. The USPS no longer offers any surface-mail options for international delivery; only airmail.
And yeah, that'd be the end of the world for eBay sellers in the US with a large international clientele... except that the US dollar is worth so little anymore that foreign buyers are frequently able to pony up for airmail and still come out ahead.
As Mikelotus said in #12, the Postal Service may not receive taxpayer subsidies anymore, but just try to implement Antinous's suggestion in #10. You will quickly discover that the USPS's government-granted monopoly on first-class mail delivery is alive and well.
Here, I'll save TNH the trouble: Fck th USPS. Fck thm wth rsty chnsw. Th sck, nd th cn ll brn n hll.
Someone give me some good news.
How about five cute animal videos?
Why does the government even in the parcel-delivery business? It makes about much sense as a government-owned ice cream company. How about we sell off the post office just like Japan is doing and let other companies deliver mail too?
@23: "And yeah, that'd be the end of the world for eBay sellers in the US with a large international clientèle... except that the US dollar is worth so little anymore that foreign buyers are frequently able to pony up for airmail and still come out ahead."
Absolutely. And this has led to oddities like a $16 item with $150 in international shipping charges to England instead of $40 in shipping cost to go to Chicago. You want to see how low the dollar has gone? Look at all of the stuff that it's more lucrative to ship 12,000 miles because none of the 2,000,000 people within an hour's drive will pay a little more for it.
I go to sleep every night wondering just how much weirder the world will be when I wake up.
@25:
It made sense in the post-Pony Express days, when there was no other way to ensure universal service. The Bell System was born out of the same worthwhile concern; if you left critical infrastructure such as mail delivery and telephone service up to private business, they'd cherry-pick the market and millions of (then-) rural Americans would have been left out in the cold.
It's been a few decades since we decided that it no longer made sense to continue the Bell System monopoly, and gee, the world hasn't ground to a deafening halt. For some reason, the USPS still gets a free ride. It's utterly asinine, and completely unjustifiable.
#27 POSTED BY MAN ON PINK CORNER
It's been a few decades since we decided that it no longer made sense to continue the Bell System monopoly, and gee, the world hasn't ground to a deafening halt.
No, but phone service is worse than it was back then. And while I don't miss paying rental fees for phones, the service then was more reliable and more varied and less costly.
Why do you think VoIP is so popular? Because people are happy with their options?
Phone service is tragically worse than than it was under the Bell System. Question is: are rates actually lower than before the break-up? Where's Zuzu?
Also in this rate adjustment, the USPS wiped out the Bound Printed Matter rate for regular consumers. Bound Printed Matter is, mainly, for shipping individual periodicals, like magazines. Most magazines can't go Media Mail (what used to be called 'Book Rate') because they have advertising in them. Even if the magazine is 51 years old and the advertisement is for a 1957 Cadillac, the USPS still considers that an ad. To me, at a certain point, advertising stops being advertising and becomes editorial content, but the USPS does not agree. Of course, individuals can't send magazines by the cheaper Periodicals rate because you need a permit and a huge volume for that. So, any magazine more than 13 ounces (about 150 pages or so) has to go Priority Mail or Global Priority Mail. A Bound Printed Matter package could go coast-to-coast for about half that.
Bound Printed Matter may only be shipped now with a retail permit -- which I think is about $900 per year.
On the positive side, the USPS does still offer a Priority Mail flat rate envelope, which works well for small groups of magazines, as long as they are not too large.
(Yes, I am a magazine seller, and this increase has made us change our whole pricing structure. The buyers are the ones who feel it.)
#25 POSTED BY KIM SCARBOROUGH
Why does the government even in the parcel-delivery business?
I don't know. Why is the government in the "staring at goats" and mind control business?
The U.S. Postal Service provided a valid service we can all use and I think it gets too much flack at times. This rate hike though deserves some higher-level intervention.
I mean, we can airlift millions of dollars in freshly minted cash in crates to Iraq so they highly corrupt system there can (literally) pocket it, but somehow a small mom & pop business in the U.S. must suffer because they *GASP* create a product and provide a service?
now you've pissed me off 3day. Should we all spam your site now? We can if we want to.
The problem with a government "jump start" of industries with monopolies... is that they create monopolies. It completely warps the business landscape in favor of the politically connected, and consumers have no recourse in steering the direction of growth and development the technology and features, since alternatives have been excluded with the force of law. Furthermore, the business models utilized by monopolies come to completely depend on the rents derived from that legal privilege.
I'd have to look up the details, but offhand my understanding of why the Internet and the Global Positioning System (GPS) have avoided this fate (as they originated as military rather than civilian projects) is because sustainable private business models of multiple competing interests were able to privatize (or at least underwrite) their continued operation.
I'm guessing UPS, FedEx, and DHL ostensibly got their start because the USPS couldn't command the DOT to ban their trucks from the road (or the FAA ban their mail from planes). However, I remember when UPS and FedEx were expressly forbidden from sending letters (only packages).
Let's not forget that Ma Bell also used its monopoly position to forbid the use of modems so as to require renting digital signaling lines. (Ever see the pricing for a T1 connection?)I think maybe you're also forgetting how many more subscribers and services are using the POTS between 1984 and now, which would explain the perceived variance in service.
At the same time, now we can all have multiple DIDs (mobile, fax, VoIP), rather than several of us sharing a party line because of expensive rates.
And what's wrong with VoIP? The fine-grained separation and competition of services is actually a (major) feature, not a bug. I'm in favor of a "dumb network" design -- data agnostic. Why should which service we can receive depend on what kind of physical layer we're connected with (or what the hub-and-spoke provider dictates we may have)? VoIP also makes CALEA more much difficult to enforce, which pragmatically helps reclaim some of our privacy.
The USPS does an incredible job for the amount of mail it handles daily. Still, that's no reason for every Time-Warner apologist to come out of the woodwork at once. If Pizza Hut tried making gasoline more expensive for Ted's Pizzeria, based on the number of pizzas he delivers (and the size and weight of Ted's 1979 Mercury Cougar), heads would roll.
Also, VoIP is terrific. You can have phone numbers in New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo, all accessible from your home in Boise, or anywhere your laptop takes you. Try setting that up twenty years ago. Possible, but not worth all the trouble.
It's great for small businesses with an international clientele, but also for con artists.
Hmmm,
Any chance of a march on Andrew Oliver's house?
Nah, that would be too uncivilized.
I guess the Stamp Act lives.
Why don't we hold our politicians accountable?
JGB
"... 'zines are like blogs on paper."
-myth-
.
@37, How so?
#38
tangibility.
you can't sell old blogs on eBay to gullible Japanese punk rock aficionados.
I read every comment here, the ones from publishing people, but I think Antonius is right on this one, it's time for UPS, FedEx or or DHL to make a stab at competitively priced mail service. Heck, unless it's a single sheet of paper (which I'd possibly pdf and probably email anyway) I'd rather pay an extra dollar to UPS to get a bonafide tracking number and some piece of mind that it's going to get there.
I know this discussion hits close to home because of BoingBoing's roots, but how does this effect the movie mailer businesses like Netflix and Gamefly?
Gads, you people are making me feel old.
News flash: long distance calls used to cost something on the order of 25 cents/minute. And it would actually cost more to call the next county than across the country.
Oh, and if you hooked up anything to the phone jack that didn't say "Western Electric," you were in violation of Federal Law.
How you guys can speak of the Bell System breakup as anything other than the Right Thing to Do is just... jaw-dropping. It must be nice to be 20 years old again.
Oh my, isn't it easy to bash the USPS.
" Here, I'll save TNH the trouble: Fck th USPS. Fck thm wth rsty chnsw. Th sck, nd th cn ll brn n hll.
As a Letter Carrier, I certainly hope I never meet Man on Pink Corner while in uniform - apparently, I wouldn't survive it!
But might I point out that rates are set by the Board of Governors, nine people appointed by the President of the United States and approved by Congress, who then choose the Postmaster General. In case that was not too obvious...POLITICAL APPOINTEES! They, not the rank-and-file career employees who (most of us, anyhow) do their best on a daily basis to get the mail delivered in an accurate and timely manner, are responsible for setting rates and policies.
I am neither an apologist nor a fanboy - but it DOES,/b> irk me to see promiscuous bashing of my employer. Considering what we attempt to do - deliver on a daily basis to every address in the United States, at a reasonable cost, with no Government subsidies - I think we're doing a rather good job.
#24 Whoa there tiger, I don't think anybody was bashing the venerable postal employees. I would think that it's pretty a pretty safe bet that if we're talking about a rates hike, we're talking about the people that instigated that hike, and not the letter carriers. I for one am constantly surprised with what my local carrier puts up with when I see what goes on in the mailroom of my apartment building. Notes about exceptions, wierd placement of outgoing mail that they're still nice enough to pickup, crazy addressing, and that's just the tip of the iceberg, I'm sure.
You should be worried about UPS or FedEx starting standard mail delivery, you might have to work for them evenutally and I'm sure the benefits package isn't quite as good as a federal government employee. Maybe what really needs to happen is a USPS employee revolt against asinine practices? Just a thought.
My opinion is that cute animal videos do not qualify as news, unless the animals are being shot into space or something like that.
Recognizing that this contributes to thread-drift, but once again annoyed at the myopia of the "who needs dead trees" crowd --
@39: To tangibility add ability-to-archive. Elsewhere on this site is some quite justifiable admiration of Bruce Sterling's sharpness of forward vision--and one of his themes has been the problem of obsolete or orphaned technologies and media. Information preserved as marks-on-paper can remain accessible and readable for very long periods--try that with, say, a file on an 8-inch floppy disk. Information stored on disks/tapes/thumbdrives/quantum-foam matrices are not directly readable by human senses and require constant migration (or the maintenance of a museum of reading devices) stay current. _Beowulf_ would not have made it to the 18th century to be rediscovered if Cotton Vitellius A.XV had been, say, a PDF on a DVD instead of a manuscript volume. Paper has its problems (particularly if it's not acid-free), and if we wait long enough languages shift into unintelligibility (it took years of study for me to be able to read Anglo-Saxon), but bits need constant attention to make sure that they can find their way into the analog world.
#42,
Hey, you have my respect and years of gratitude. I worked a season in the safety of an SCF center, and I felt that the carriers were the foot soldiers to our rear echelon. Onward, brave warriors!
#45
not to mention what we know of only because of stone tablets.
#42: The only policy I have a problem with is the one that grants the USPS a monopoly on First Class delivery. Correct me if I'm wrong -- and I may well be, in which case I apologize -- but that monopoly is still in effect, right?
If the USPS is so great, it won't have any problem competing with private carriers.
Yeah, I'm trying to self-publish a series of comic books, and this is one nail in the coffin that I didn't need.
However, I agree with the previous posters who said that it was the earlier rates increases that did the damage.
I can't move to the internet -- I'm already on the internet. You don't make many sales from the internet. You make sales in stores, but after the store takes half, the distributor takes 10% of the remainder, and you pay for postage and printing, there is exactly 0 left over and people wonder why comics cost so much these days.
And then people shoplift them from the stores!
The only way to make money with minicomics is conventions.
When did FedEx or UPS say they are willing to deliver first class mail anywhere in the US for the same price?, including on Saturdays? I missed that, so can someone post the link to that too please? Also can someone post a list of countries that do their mail that way also so we can check out how good it works? Since its evidently obvious that it will work great, I am sure there are many countries already doing it that way, correct?
MiamiDave @42 points out that rates are set by the Postal Board of Governors. Follow that lead, and you'll find that the PBG also had a relatively new chairman at that time, one whose written philosophy is:
"...none should be favored and none benefited. Each party pays the cost of service it consumes, not less, and does not bear the cost of others’ consumption."
http://riskman.typepad.com/peerflow/2008/05/postal-hikes-an.html
Time Warner's lobbying alone wouldn't have effected this hike. That plus political appointees did. Fixing this will require doing politics.
On May 14, 2007, the USPS dropped the international surface mail and all economy mail services as well as other mailing services. This elimination has affected millions already and we are taking action.
A petition has been created, please visit:
http://www.petitiononline.com/USPSISM/petition.html to sign it. I am the petition owner.
This elimination is severely going to and has already hurt humanitarian aid groups such as the Peace Corps, charities, religious groups, book companies that donate books to poorer countries, expatriates, students, especially those living overseas or foreign students living in the US, small businesses, Christmas shoppers, etc. This elimination is also going to have an environmental impact. For those who do choose to pay more for shipping everything will be going by air now instead of by sea.
Please support us by signing the petition and passing it to everyone in your group, organization, company or church who you think benefits from this service or who would like to see the service return.
We hope to raise awareness about this issue and force the US Postal Service to reverse their decision. We will also bring the US Congress into the picture.
Please spread the word!
Thank you in advance for your support.
Jeff