A monthly periodical of the size and character which Postmaster General Hitchcock has reference to--of the size and character to win its way to an issue of 650,000 copies a month--must cost its publisher not less, on an average, than 30 cents per copy, probably more. The subscribing reader pays 12½ cents per copy for it--pays directly to the publisher. The news stand buyer pays 15 cents a copy, but the publisher, after paying newsdealer and agency commissions on the latter sales, realizes but _8 cents per copy_. Here let us see how this publisher’s circulation-cost and receipts figure out. Six hundred and fifty thousand monthly issue figures to an issue of 7,800,000 copies for the year. At 30 cents’ cost of production, which is rather low than high, those copies cost the publisher to produce, to get readers for and to distribute, the annual total of $2,340,000. He realizes in return from subscription and news stand sales about as follows:
From news stand and agency sales (500,000 per month, or 6,600,000 copies a year), he realizes 8 cents per copy or $480,000
From subscribers (150,000 per month or 1,800,000 a year), at 12½ cents each 225,000 -------- Total receipts $705,000
Thus it is clear that for an expenditure of $2,340,000 a year to produce and distribute his excellent _low-priced_ periodical to readers, the publisher gets in return only $705,000, thus standing a net loss of $1,635,000 on his mechanical output--no, on his _literary and educational output_. And, mark you, that $705,000 Mr. Hitchcock must, necessarily, have included in his “gross” receipts. How, then, is the publisher able to furnish his readers such literary and educational nourishment at so great a loss on production?
There is but one answer: The advertising carried by the periodical must recoup the loss on publication and yield the publisher whatever profit he may realize. Yet Mr. Hitchcock, in the profound profundity of his knowledge of periodical publishing, figures that the advertising receipts are clear profit to the publisher. True, he does, in one of his urgent letters to Senator Penrose, I believe it is, incidentally admit a possible maximum cost or expense of “fifteen per cent” in securing and printing the advertisements. “Fifteen per cent!”