APCUG Reports
January-March 2007

I have had a number of naysayers tell me that my idea might have worked in 94, but it is totally obsolete now. I will agree that the cost figures in my article need to be updated, but unless you have a commercial free computer newspaper in your community, I really believe that this idea would work today, and if you do have a commercial free computer newspaper in your community, I bet that if you approached them with providing them free filler items each month, that they would be happy to provide you with a section in their paper.

The key to this idea is to locate a printer with a web press, generally one that prints daily or weekly newspapers for small cities in your area, that would be willing to print your paper. Tulsa has such a printer, Neighbor Newspapers, and we got quotes from them, but we were able to locate a printer in Nowata, Oklahoma (about 50 miles away), that printed the Nowata paper and several others, and they were hungrier than Neighbor Newspapers. They had more idle time on their press, and were able to quote us a much better price. They even sent someone to Tulsa to pick up our copy (today we would just generate a PDF and email it to them, like we do to the printer in Sarasota, Florida that prints APCUG Reports), and when the issue was printed they would bring it to my house on pallets, and put it in my garage, for my distributors to pick up.

I did a lot of the distribution myself, but I also called a list of volunteers when a new issue was delivered, and they would stop by my house and pick up a bunch of bundles and take them to distribution sites in their area (libraries, university campuses, computer stores, and many other locations).

At the time we started we were printing about 500 copies of a 16-page 8-1/2 x 11 newsletter, and it was costing us $150 per month (excluding postage). I found that by printing on newsprint in tabloid format I was able to print 2,000 copies of a 12-page tabloid or 3,000 copies of a 8- page tabloid for about the same amount of money, and since you get about 175% as much information on a tabloid page than an 8-1/2 x 11 page, we were talking about 4 times as many copies of a larger publication (more articles) or 6 times as many copies of a slightly smaller publication.

But with the increased distribution I was able to attract advertising (which I had not been able to attract before), from computer stores, internet service providers, etc, who loved being able to get an ad in a newspaper that that was going directly to computer users, for prices far below what the Tulsa World charged, so I could afford to print even more copies of an even larger newspaper. Our first edition was 5,000 copies of a 12-page tabloid, and in 14 months we grew to 10,000 copies of a 20- or 24-page tabloid.

The cost figures in my article clearly need to be updated, but I bet there are still plenty of newspaper printers for small town newspapers that would love to print your tabloid, and with just a little work I bet that you could persuade several computer stores and internet service providers to take out an ad in your publication. You might even be able to get enough ads for that first issue that it would not cost your UG anything. When I started it I said that TCS should invest what it was costing us to print our newsletter that just went to the membership, but after a year I had enough advertisers that the paper was completely advertiser supported, and I even built up a $5,000 cushion in the treasury.

My mistake was turning advertising over to someone else, who did not do his job, and for failing to check with him every month, because I found myself eating into that $5,000 cushion because new advertising revenue was not coming in (it went directly to the treasurer, who did not inform me that no new revenue was coming in, until the bank account was getting low). By this time my health was such that I could not go out and bring in new advertisers, and I could not find anyone who would do the advertising solicitation, so we had to drop to publishing only on the web, and membership plummeted, because we no longer had the publicity of a tabloid newsletter being distributed all over town.

I think that this idea could work today, and if my health was better, I would reactivate it myself, and use it to bring the Tulsa Computer Society out of the problem many UGs face, decreasing membership.

Give it a shot. See who prints the local paper in all of the small cities in a 50 to 100 mile radius of your city, and see what they would charge to print an 8, 12, 16, 20, or 24 page tabloid, and then call a few computer stores, etc to see if they would be willing to take out an advertisement each month (for a fehundred dollars) in a free computer tabloid for your city. I bet the libraries, universities, computer stores, and many other locations would be willing to take a stack of free papers and put them on their counter. We had our paper distributed in Gas Station / Convenience Stores, restaurants, flower shops, department stores, and many other locations, not just in Tulsa, but all over the Greater Tulsa area.