Via Julie Sabatier of the Willamette Wee Online. Jule examines an impending postage rate hike which will mean headaches for Portland's small-press hub of niche publications:

As everyone grumbles about the cost of a first-class stamp rising 2 cents last week, small publications in Portland such as Plazm and Bitch are sweating their own rate hikes looming this summer. They say their mailing costs will increase by 20 percent or more. And that could mean serious cutbacks for their operations, which already work on narrow financial margins.

"Because most independent media operates on a shoestring budget, these unfair rate hikes mean that the future of independent publications is at risk," Bitch magazine publisher and recent Portland transplant Debbie Rasmussen wrote in an email newsletter to about 6,400 of the 11-year-old nonprofit mag's supporters.

The Postal Regulatory Committee, an agency independent of the U.S. Postal Service, recommended the price escalation in March based on a rate structure proposed by media behemoth Time Warner.

The rate increase, which goes into effect July 15, affects about 5,700 periodicals nationwide and several here in Stumptown, which is something of a small-press hub, with Plazm, Herbivore, Imbibe, Bitch and one of the country's largest zine libraries at the Independent Publishing Resource Center.

Time Warner, the world's largest media conglomerate, publishes more than 100 magazines, including People and Fortune, and won't be affected by the rate increase in the same way as smaller periodicals. That's because circulation volume plays a major factor in the new, complex rate scheme. Periodicals that require bundling, sorting and transportation in smaller numbers will be paying higher prices. Whereas the post office previously determined rates based largely on weight, now quantity of advertising and destination will also affect the price of postage. (At WW, only about 200 of the paper's 90,000 copies are mailed each week, and circulation director Robert Lehrkind says the rate change won't affect the paper.)

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Source: Willamette Wee Online

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