THE GOODS : Magazines’ Success Is in the Cards
You know the routine: You pick up a magazine. Cards flutter out. You put down the magazine, rake up the clutter and curse.
Should you take the fallout personally?
Sure. It’s designed just for you.
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Question: Why are loose subscription cards--known in the publishing industry as blow-ins or shake-outs--such pests?
Answer: They’re supposed to be. “It is proven that if you have to pick it up you will look at it,” says Al Baglios of AM Graphics, a bindery and printing equipment manufacturer. There’s a 97% better reader reaction to a loose card than to an attached card in terms of paying attention, says Baglios.
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Q: Why won’t the cards just go away?
A: Because they work. The Magazine Publishers of America reports that inserts “generate 22% of subscriptions,” second only to publisher mailings. “If it’s an initial subscription, insert cards make up 28% of subscriptions.”
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Q: What kind of paper trail are we talking about here?
A: Using annual subscription sales figures from the MPA with one six-inch loose card per magazine, if you placed the cards end to end, you could circle the Equator nearly 1 1/2 times.
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Q: When were they born?
A: “I remember insert cards at least since 1948 at Life Magazine and further back than that,” says Hal Speer, a publishing consultant. “In the late ‘40s, we got an insert card mailed in that had run in one of our magazines many years earlier. . . . Blow-ins are more recent, possibly late 1960s.”
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Q: How do the cards get into magazines?
A: They’re spit in by a device, dubbed the blow-in machine. Robb Steinman of Quad/Graphics Inc. in Pewaukee, Wis., describes the machine as “a bit bigger than a breadbox, standing up on end. It has a drum. A subscription card is vacuum-sucked down into little gripper fingers, which open and close. The card drops down. It’s pinched inside the fingers. Then a belt drive shoots the card into the magazine.”
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Q: What happens to those cards after you mail them in?
A: The cards wind up at a company such as Neodata Inc., in Boulder, Colo., which processes 15 million subscription cards annually for 400 magazines. Neodata oversees first-time subscriptions as well as renewals, address labels and billing.
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Q: Any bogus requests from famous names?
A: Yes, from Disneyland to the White House. “We do get some wonderful notes from Mickey Mouse and the President,” says Nancy Talmey, Neodata’s general manager. She says Neodata forwards suspicious cards to the appropriate publisher. “I’m sure the President’s subscriptions are paid for,” Talmey says.
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Q: Would a musty subscription card found in the attic be honored?
A: “We got someone who sent in a blow-in card from years ago when Seventeen was $3 for a year’s subscription,” recalls an executive at the magazine, where the annual rate is now $14.95 for 12 issues. “Unfortunately, the blow-in card didn’t have an expiration date. We prorated and sent four issues.”
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Q: Any shenanigans with subscription cards?
A: There’s the Hex of the Ex, for starters. Former spouses have been suspected of mailing a slew of subscription cards in the names of ex-mates, who are besieged by a blizzard of magazines and ensuing bills. Other folks don’t subscribe; they just scribble little notes, from lovey to loony, and toss ‘em back to the magazines.
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Q: Does prepaid postage inspire high jinks?
A: Sometimes the cards arrive with little gifts taped to them. Presents have ranged from Life Savers to tea bags. “Next thing you know, they’ll strap a brick to the card just to see if the post office will deliver,” one circulation director predicts.
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Q: Can the cards be put to good use other than ordering magazines?
A: They make cheap bookmarks, coasters, paper chains, emergency toothpicks, note paper, origami practice and peashooters.
