34 Tips for Cutting Costs Without Laying Off Staff
Money-saving advice from top publishers on everything from marketing to manufacturing, postage, editorial … and more.
December 2008 By James SturdivantWith the economy officially in recession and sharp ad-revenue declines affecting magazines of all sizes and scopes, few magazine publishers have failed to address cost-cutting strategies and ways to do more with less. Here are 34 tips from a cross-section of the publishing world for reining in costs without sacrificing too much in the way of staff or quality.
Tips From …
Elinor Fish, managing editor, Big Stone Publishing
Carbondale, Col.-based Big Stone Publishing produces Rock and Ice and Trail Runner magazines. The small, independent publisher has become expert at being efficient with staff resources.
1. Make use of skilled interns.
“One cost-cutting measure we’ve taken is making good use of all the eager interns knocking at our door,” Fish says. “Unlike some big magazines that only use interns to make coffee and copy edit, we select interns with enough proven writing experience that they are able to (with close oversight) write articles for the magazine.”
The magazines realize big savings in their freelance budget, and the interns gain valuable experience. Don’t miss the chance to pick and choose specific skills when you have a large pool of applicants, she adds; the company has, for instance, had success with photography interns.
2. Work with book publishers to obtain free content.
Big Stone has had success sourcing free editorial content in the form of book excerpts. “Especially when a book is new to market, a publisher will often not charge us for the reprint because of the great publicity it provides for the book,” Fish says.
Tips From …
Frank Anton, CEO, Hanley Wood
Hanley Wood is a business-to-business media company with more than 30 titles serving primarily the building and construction trades. “The big costs in publishing are people, printing, paper and postage,” Anton says. “That’s where you have to look for big savings, and, alas, people are the biggest expense by far.” Anton recommends addressing staffing as a primary way to realize savings, but offers other cost-saving measures as well.
3. Cut back on travel and marketing.
4. Close office locations to cut real estate expense.
5. Renegotiate vendor contracts.
Tips From …
Andrew Berman, executive vice president, The Mortgage Press
The Mortgage Press publishes 37 products aimed at mortgage brokers and other mortgage bankers.
6. Use tools to streamline ad tracking.
The Mortgage Press went from a “Rube Goldberg” spreadsheet-management process to a more efficient ad-tracking and workflow-management system (using Magazine Manager). “We went from entering an ad seven times to only once,” Berman says. The new system has also eliminated the problem of late ads, with attendant time and labor wasted.
7. Automate where practical.
Automatic e-mail reminders and features that allow clients to upload ads on a regular basis avoid building time-wasting procedures into the ad-procurement process.
Tips From …
Todd Matherne, CEO, Renaissance Publishing
Renaissance Publishing produces several regional magazines in Louisiana, including New Orleans Magazine, Louisiana Life, New Orleans Homes & Lifestyles and New Orleans Bride. True to its name, Renaissance has experienced a revenue upswing in a down market, adding five staffers and planning a new title in 2009.
8. Cut paper weights.
Renaissance recently changed from 45# to 40# (interior pages) on all titles, Matherne reports. “The cost of the paper is less and the tonnage is less, both in cost of paper and cost of mailing,” he notes.
9. Cut trim sizes.
“We have also [converted] our glossy tabloid magazine, St. Charles Avenue, from full-size to magazine-size as of the January 2009 issue,” Matherne says.
10. Do less promotional mailing.
The company has cut significantly the number of full-issue promotional copies it mails and is experimenting with cheaper ways to attract customers. “We are doing a lot more [promotion] on the Web,” he says, including a planned revamp of all magazine Web sites to make them better promotional tools.
Tips From …
Dan Pritchett, vice president, marketing and business development, Logos Research Systems Inc.
Logos Research Systems (LRS) publishes the Logos Bible Software, and recently launched a 10,000 circulation niche publication, Bible Study Magazine.
11. Shift marketing dollars online.
LRS realized there were budget-conscious alternatives to inserting promotional business reply cards in magazines. It shifted some of the money saved by not having to print, insert and pay postage on the cards—which Pritchett estimates at several thousand dollars per issue—to online marketing, including buying ad space in the e-newsletters of related organizations and creating a Facebook page. The results have been dramatic, Pritchett says, with excellent return on less investment.
12. Better target your print marketing.
For the Bible Study Magazine launch, LRS worked with an Internet store that sells products to Bible Study’s target audience to insert ads into packages shipped to customers. The campaign is far more targeted than a typical business reply card effort and less costly than sending complimentary copies, Pritchett notes.
Tips From …
Adrian Stanley, CEO, The Charlesworth Group
The Charlesworth Group provides workflow efficiency solutions, including editing, typesetting/pagination, graphics sizing and redrawing, print and print-on-demand options to a range of scholarly and scientific, technical and medical (STM) journal publishers.
13. Understand your market,
and build pricing and business models around it. Allocate resources where your readers are today, not where they were one, three or five years ago. This includes moving judiciously into electronic and social media, but not sacrificing print where reader demand and marketing models based in the medium still create the most return on investment (ROI).
14. Use standard templates for pagination.
Journal publishers like the Nature Publishing Group and British Medical Association have led the way on this, Stanley says. Templates and sub-templates can provide up to 50 article types, especially when integrated with XML-based workflows, saving you time and money by automating production.
15. Integrate workflows and technology with other vendor technology.
Charlesworth has automated the client interface between peer-review systems and online publishing hosting platforms. Such solutions make client interaction simple and efficient, Stanley says. “If you can save someone time, you can probably save costs in the long run,” he says.
16. Know which part of the workflow a technology partner is good at,
and avoid duplication of vendor services. Understand your partner’s strengths and be sure you can trust them to offer you only those services they do best. On the other hand, if a job can be done more efficiently by consolidating several services under a single vendor at a better price, do it.
17. Reduce the number of pages printed.
When presenting something online is acceptable to readers, do so.
18. For journals, experiment with author-pay models,
where authors pay to have their work published. In some circumstances, STM and other publishers have successfully utilized an open-access/author-pay model to save money on product launch and editorial costs.
Tips From …
Catherine Harding-Wiltshire, head of production and distribution, BMJ Group
The BMJ Group publishes a number of medical journals, as well as offers online products and events.
19. Review contracts regularly.
“We review our print contracts every three years,” Harding-Wiltshire says. “This involves reviewing the current offering and exploring new ways to do processes.”
Tips From …
Susan Spilka, director, corporate communications, John Wiley & Sons
Wiley publishes STM and scholarly journals, encyclopedias, books, and online products and services; professional/trade books, and online applications and Web sites; and educational materials, among others.
20. Electronically disseminate promotional copies.
21. Offer online options to save on print costs.
For journal customers, Wiley promotes the option of online-only subscriptions.
Tips From …
Elaine Fry, vice president, manufacturing and production, Forbes Media LLC
Forbes Media serves an audience of more than 45 million with global print and online media properties.
22. Eliminate unnecessary comp copies.
We’ve been … [reviewing] the comp and office copy lists,” Fry says. “Staff come and go, and the comp lists change on both our end as well as the receiving end.” The lists add many more copies to the print order than necessary, she says, and should be reviewed semi-annually, if not quarterly.
Tips From …
Traci Lucien, vice president, publication operations, AARP
AARP publishes the world’s largest-circulation magazine, AARP the Magazine, in several editions, along with a wide assortment of multimedia products.
23. Work smarter across the organization.
Association publishers often have the opportunity to leverage assets across the institution to save publishing costs, through strategies such as reducing the total number of vendors used by various departments or consolidating IT support.
24. Cut costs with soft proofing.
AARP has had some success saving money with soft proofing. It also has backed away from use of high-end color proofs and opted for alternative proof substrates.
25. Strategize with your printer.
“Always go back and have a conversation with your printer about ways to lower costs,” she advises. “Have them be part of the process. Printers usually will come back and say, ‘Here are some other ways [to save].’”
26. Make sure your address list is clean.
With more than 24 million subscribers, AARP makes sure it is only sending one issue per household and is not sending to duplicate accounts. “Take advantage of the National Change of Address [database],” Lucien says.
27. Drop-ship as much as you can.
The AARP leverages its size to get its magazines as far into the mail stream as possible.
28. Make online options available.
But don’t push people into it. AARP offers an expanding slate of online and electronic options for subscribers, who “over time will develop the habit of going to the site and not getting the print edition,” says Lucien. In the short-term, she says, “it’s about honoring members’ preferences. Don’t do it all in one fell swoop.”
Tips From …
Louis Milani, senior director, publishing operations and business affairs, Consumer’s Union
Consumer’s Union publishes Consumer Reports, as well as the newsletters Consumer Reports Health and Consumer Reports Money Advisor, with a combined circulation of more than 7 million. According to Milani, the organization pays postage on 220 million pieces of mail a year (110 million by standard mail), so it’s understandable that cutting those costs would be a singular preoccupation. “Every penny increase or decrease equals over $2 million,” he says.
29. Embrace drop-shipping or co-mailing.
Like AARP, Consumer’s Union has realized large savings by dropping magazine shipments as far as possible into the mail stream. Smaller publishers can work with a printer offering co-mailing options as a way to achieve similar postal-rate savings.
30. Ask your printer about co-binding.
Even within a publishing operation the size of Consumer’s Union, publications printed together are good candidates for co-binding, Milani says. The organization saves money by binding its Consumer Reports Health (550,000 circulation) and Money Advisor (about 225,000) together on steady stream during printing.
31. Make sure files are as clean as possible.
This avoids problems going back and forth with the printer or in other stages of the workflow.
32. Clean up your list.
Make sure you have current addresses, and get as many correct change of addresses in on the main print run as possible. About 9 percent of standard mail is never delivered, Milani says—not surprising with around 15 percent of the population moving every year.
Tips From …
Mark Hertzog, vice president, group publisher, Publishing Executive and Book Business magazines
Publishing Executive and Book Business serve publishing executives in the book and magazine publishing industries.
33. Cut the print order for media kits by at least the inventory left over from the prior year.
Also, reduce the number of pages by putting only the essentials in the printed versions (demographics, competitive info, editorial calendar, rates) and put everything else like specs and secondary data online. Include a list of URLs to specific pages.
34. Combine into one media kit magazines that share audiences, as we did with seven of our magazines.
This saves printing and increases combination-selling opportunities. Online and PDF media kits can always be more targeted.
35. Save on staff travel by asking editors to prioritize shows and cut less important ones.
Caution: Editors and publishers should communicate on priorities. Don’t cut editors’ travel to events where they build the brand’s image in the eyes of advertisers and prospects, or to events essential to editors’ education and development.
36. Permit more telecommuting.
This saves the employer office space, and the employee commuting expenses.
