What the July postal increase actually costs a 3,000-circulation weekly
Periodicals rates went up 6.8% on July 12, with 9.3% within county. Here is the arithmetic on a typical weekly, and the surprisingly small number of subscribers you would need to move to erase it.
On July 12, USPS raised Periodicals rates by an average of 6.8%. Within-county went up 9.3%. Outside-county went up 6.5%.
For context on how that lands: Marketing Mail rose 4.8% in the same filing, and a First-Class stamp went up 4%. Periodicals, the class community newspapers actually mail in, took the steepest increase of any class of mail.
If you have been putting off reading the details, this post is the short version, with the arithmetic done.
The arithmetic on a typical weekly
Take a paper mailing 2,400 copies an issue, 52 issues a year, with about 70% of that going within county. Say annual postage runs $28,000.
Your blended increase is not 6.8%. It is the weighted mix of the two rates you actually pay:
70% × 9.3% + 30% × 6.5% = 8.5%
On $28,000, that is about $2,370 a year in additional postage for mailing exactly the same number of copies to exactly the same people.
Nothing about the paper changed. Nothing about the subscriber list changed. That is simply the new cost of the same operation.
Three things worth checking before you do anything
Your within-county share. It took the 9.3% hit, the steeper of the two rates. If you print out of the area, more of your run may be classified outside-county than you assume. Worth confirming against a recent postal statement rather than guessing, because it changes your blended number materially.
The new workshare discounts. USPS introduced Periodicals discounts alongside this increase: carrier route basic at $0.140 (85.4% passthrough), high density at $0.037 (86%), saturation flats at $0.065 (85.5%). If your mail is not presorted to capture these, some portion of this increase is avoidable without changing anything at all about your subscribers. Ask your mail house or your postal consultant specifically about these three.
Whether this is a trend or an event. It is a trend. Publishers have faced postal price increases running roughly 254% above the rate of inflation since August 2021. The Postmaster General said publicly that without change, the Postal Service would be unable to deliver the mail within about a year. Whatever you decide, decide it as a policy rather than as a one-time response to one letter.
The number that actually matters
Most coverage of a rate increase stops at "here is what it costs." The more useful question is the other one: how much would have to change for this to stop mattering?
Every mailed copy that becomes an e-Edition removes a postage line permanently. So the break-even is straightforward. How many copies would you need to convert for the savings to equal the increase?
For the paper above, postage after the increase works out to about $0.24 per mailed copy. The increase is $2,370. So:
$2,370 ÷ $0.24 ≈ 9,750 pieces a year ≈ 7.8% of the mailed run
On 2,400 copies an issue, that is roughly 187 subscribers.
Not 187 subscribers cancelled. 187 subscribers who read the same paper on a screen instead of on newsprint, and who stay subscribers.
And that figure is postage alone. Add your print and production cost per copy (newsprint, ink, plates, press time) and the break-even drops further, usually well under 5%.
Why this is a better answer than raising prices
The instinct when costs rise is to raise the subscription price. That works, once. It also costs you subscribers each time you do it, and in a market where circulation is already eroding, every price increase is a small, permanent subtraction from your list.
Conversion is different in a specific way: it keeps the subscriber. The person still reads the paper, still counts for your audited circulation, still sees your advertisers. What changes is the delivery cost, and it changes permanently. It does not come back next July when rates move again.
It is also not all-or-nothing. Conversion is never forced, and it should not be. Some readers want paper and always will, and those subscribers are not the ones you are talking to. You only need the share of your list who would say yes if asked, and in most papers that share is considerably larger than the owner expects, because a meaningful number of subscribers are already reading on a phone.
Run your own number
The figures above are one paper's arithmetic. Yours will differ, mostly on the within-county split and the print cost.
We built a calculator that does this on your numbers: put in your annual postage spend, copies mailed, and in-county share, and it gives you the increase in dollars and the break-even conversion. It runs in your browser and nothing is sent anywhere.
Run your numbers on the postal calculator →
If the number surprises you in either direction, it is worth twenty minutes with your postal statements to confirm the inputs. Either it is smaller than you feared, which is good news, or it is larger, which is worth knowing in August rather than next February.
Rate figures are from the News/Media Alliance, MediaPost and the National Newspaper Association. Full rate tables are in Postal Regulatory Commission Docket R2026-1.