Cheaper to send to Kindle subscribers than print a newspaper throughout the year

It’s not that we say what the New York Times should do, but we want to note that printing and delivering a newspaper during the year is twice as expensive as if the newspaper sent each of its subscribers a new Amazon Kindle 2 reader .

This is how we thought. According to the newspaper’s financial statements , for the quarter, the company spent $ 63 million on paper and paints and another 148 million spent on salaries and services. According to rumors, the editorial staff separately costs 200 million dollars a year.

We multiply the quarterly expenses by four, subtract 200 million and we get that distribution on paper costs the newspaper 644 million. The

Kindle sells for $ 359. In a recent open letter, a Times confidant mentions that they have 830 thousand regular subscribers. We multiply these two numbers and we get 297 million - almost half of the amount of 644 million higher. (A reliable source told us that we were so modest in our assessments that we were not even close to the real numbers.)

Do we want to say that the newspaper should completely switch to digital delivery? No, because it will kill ad revenue, and not everyone will love the Kindle.

What we want to say is that, as a way to deliver news, print media are too costly and ineffective. Via Alexander Moskalyuk .