Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle | Hacker News Reader

Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle

alleyinsider.com

21 pointsFlemlord11 comments

Note that this article compares the costs of printing all copies of the New York Times to sending only subscribers free Kindles.

I started this post expecting to explain how this made the NYT's printing costs sound a bit more reasonable. Then I found that according to Wikipedia, which cites a 2007 release by the paper itself, the daily circulation of the New York Times is 1,000,665 Daily and 1,438,585 on Sundays. I am honestly quite surprised that the number of papers sold at newsstands and vending machines is therefore under 200K on weekdays. Using these figures and building off of SAI's estimates, the cost of printing copies just for subscribers is probably about $503 million, or still enough for just under 1.7 kindles per subscriber.

Note also that neither bandwidth costs nor the costs of delivering papers is counted. I presume factoring this in would make the print newspaper look even worse.

This doesn't account for the fact that most copies of the NYT would likely be read by more than one person. The ad rates take these extra readers into account. How many people do you know who would gladly let others read the news off of their $400 Kindle?

I think this ignores the fact that the reason some people (like me) buys/subscribes to a paper is because it's... printed on paper. I can get all of the information with my computer or my iPhone, but I enjoy the interaction with actual paper. I wouldn't want to read it on a Kindle.

For the record, I'd be willing to pay substantially more than I currently am for that privilege, but the newspapers don't seem willing to significantly raise their prices.

The advantage of the newspaper at work is that we pass it around the break room all day. It gets annotated with interesting notes and drawings by everyone. That one single newspaper gets read by perhaps 50 people.

Of course, the advantage of HN is that articles get annotated with interesting notes by people I've never seen -- people who don't all work at the same company. And I don't have to commute to an office with a break room in order to read them.

The advantage of the newspaper at work is that [...] It gets annotated with interesting notes and drawings by everyone.

I thought that was what a wiki was for. Once your newspaper for a given day is annotated, how do you search it in the future? http://images.google.com/images?q=newspaper+stacks How would one even store something like that? http://www.georgeweber.net/radio-curtis_office.jpg

http://www.bradfitzpatrick.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/200...

> I thought that was what a wiki was for. Once your newspaper for a given day is annotated, how do you search it in the future?

You don't. The asymptotic approach of storage costs to 0 has made some people believe that everything is worth saving.

The asymptotic approach of storage costs to 0 has made some people believe that everything is worth saving.

Like Fred Wilson. http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/01/confessions-of-a-pack-rat-ak...

Confessions Of A Pack Rat (aka My Document Retention Policy)

I have some experience in the printing industry and this doesn't come as much of a surprise to me. Printing is a hugely difficult business to turn a profit with. The harsh reality is that the cost of doing business is so high that profits are usually depressing by comparison.

It'd be amazing if we could see an income statement with a full breakdown of costs of goods sold, operating expenses, etc. -- itemized and all!

I spent several years working for a very small commercial printer and was in charge of the billing/inventory system there. Eventually, since I was tracking the raw materials, I was put in charge of ordering paper.

We only three mid-sized printing presses and I was dropping just under six figures every month on paper alone. Of course, we weren't printing on the kind of paper you get with the NYT. This was higher quality stuff but you can get an idea of the costs involved.

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