Postal Service Plans to Sell Magazine Subscriptions

The U.S. Postal Service, at the urging of publishers, is planning to sell magazine subscriptions on its website and to promote them at post offices. “The USPS is moving forward on a plan to offer magazine subscriptions for sale on usps.com,” says Idealliance’s summary of the recent Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee (MTAC) meeting, a joint USPS-mailers group.

Postal officials’ interest in promoting magazines may seem odd in light of the Postal Service’s claim that the Periodicals class is its most unprofitable type of mail. But that supposed unprofitability is the result of allocations for fixed costs, some questionable cost accounting,