The vast majority (97.1%) of around 110,000 voters backed a strike from a 76% turnout of CWU members, representing both one of the largest ‘Yes’ votes and turnouts for many years. Strikes at Royal Mail were averted last year after the postal service agreed to increase pay, reform pensions and reduce weekly working hours from 39 to 35 by 2022, subject to productivity improvements. CWU said the agreement is not being honoured by the company’s new leadership but Royal Mail has said it is abiding by the agreement and has awarded two pay rises since last year.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) recently filed its new pricing for the 2020 postal rate increase among its various mail class products with an average price increase of 1.9% across the board. Pending review by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), the new prices will begin on January 26, 2020. The good news is that while a postage pricing increase is a disappointment for all involved, carrier route mail did not see as dramatic of an increase as other mail classes. We believe this will open up additional opportunities to get involved in a postage cost-savings plan. For catalogers, one of the best ways to achieve this carrier route pricing tier is through co-mailing – which is the process of combining and sorting multiple different titles into a single mail stream it enters into the postal facilities.

Grabbing a newspaper and coffee to go is an American tradition. But it is eroding as more publications favor online-only and coffee shops and retail outlets stop assigning space for newspapers. Neiman Lab reports that Kroger, the largest U.S. supermarket chain by revenue, will stop carrying free newspapers and magazines as of October 15 — after 20 years. A Kroger rep told the Memphis Business Journal: “We are removing the publication racks from our stores because more publications continue to shift to digital formats, resulting in less customers using the products.”

The number of books self-published in the U.S. saw more rapid growth in 2018, jumping 40% over 2017, according to Bowker’s annual survey of the self-publishing market. In its report, “Self-Publishing in the United States, 2013-2018: Print and E-books,” the total number of print and e-books that were self-published in 2018 was 1.68 million, up from 1.19 million in 2017. Bowker measures the size of the market based on the number ISBN’s registered and thus does not include self-published e-books by Amazon’s Kindle division, which uses an Amazon identifier. Amazon is considered to be largest publisher of self-published e-books, even if no number is available. Amazon’s CreateSpace division dominates the print self-publishing market, with 1.4 million self-published print titles last year, up from 929.290 in 2017.