Satevepost Goes to 10

With its April 11 issue, the Curtis Publishing Co.'s Saturday Evening Post will pass a conspicuous milestone: it will raise its newsstand price from 5-c- to 10-c-, its subscription price from $2 a year to $3.

Macfadden's Liberty quickly followed the Post with a 10-c- price effective April 18. In World War I, when its paper costs soared, the Post was worth more, just as old paper stock, than the 3 1/2-c- newsdealers paid for it. But the Post did not raise its price.

Now, though its paper costs are up less than 1-c- a lb., the Post is raising its price. Reason: the Post has ceased to dominate the weekly magazine field.

In 1929, with its circulation at 2,865,000, the Post made around $15,000,000. For the first nine months of 1941, with Post circulation at 3,425,025, all Curtis publications combined made only $1,628,386-- down from $2,624,081 for the same period the year before.

From 5,576 pages of advertising in 1929 the Post had last year dropped to 2,863. Start of this year shows a further decline: the Post's first eight issues of 1942 are down 16.04%, in pages of advertising, from the same period a year ago.

Cyrus Curtis' great contribution to U.S. publishing was the discovery that U.S. advertisers were so eager to have a real mass medium that they would gladly pay the cost of printing the copies if Curtis would get the circulation, even if the reader paid only a token payment. With that discovery of low-cost mass publishing, Cyrus revolutionized the magazine industry, made more money than any magazine publisher ever had before --more, perhaps, than any magazine publisher ever will again.

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