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Volume 4, Issue 2 And
the Winner Is...United Litho!
And the winner is… United Litho, Again This YearUnited Litho, Inc. (ULI) is proud to announce winning 21 “Best in Print 2000” awards through the Printing Industries of Virginia (PIVA). ULI won eight first-place awards and 13 Awards of Excellence in the 41st annual PIVA awards competition. Each year, PIVA, our regional affiliate of the Printing Industries of America, holds its competition for printers in various fields. The judging is done by a panel of some of the most knowledgeable professionals in the printing industry—members of the Graphic Arts Technical Foundation (GATF). GATF has long been recognized as the research center and manufacturing procedure elitists in North America. In each category, the panel of judges is looking for excellence in litho preparation, printing and binding. Winners are determined on the basis of printer skill, job difficulty, registration quality and technical excellence. We are honored to be acknowledged by the industry experts at GATF. We would like to thank our customers—whose publication excellence is exhibited in this competition—along with our press and bindery crews, digital prepress department, account managers, and planning and sales staff. Each member of the ULI team takes a special interest in each publication we print, and does an outstanding job of ensuring quality production. The following were winners in the “Magazine” category of the competition. First
Place: Awards
of Excellence: Taming
the Domestic Mail Manual: Along with rate increases averaging 9.9 percent for Periodicals and 8.8 percent for regular Standard Mail, the recent USPS rate case—which took effect in January of this year—marks the beginning of more stringent enforcement of some postal regulations that have been on the books for some time. What follows is a broad overview of those areas with the potential to derail your operations. Of course, this overview is meant as general guidance only, and is no substitute for a thorough understanding of the regulations as they apply to your publication. Each section below includes a specific reference to the applicable portion of the Domestic Mail Manual (DMM), available here. Please take the time to familiarize yourself with the regulations as written and contact your marketing representative at the USPS for additional clarification if necessary. Send money The new postal rates—incorporating an average increase of 4.6 percent across all mail categories—took effect January 7, accompanied by howls of protest from the Board of Governors of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).
Take up origami January 10 also marked the end of the line for using existing stocks of barcoded BRM envelopes and cards with a barcode clear zone whose left boundary is 4 1/2" from the right edge of the piece. Current standards, outlined in DMM S922.6.0.c, dictate that the left boundary of the barcode clear zone must be 4-3/4" from the right edge of the piece. Don’t use the three dirty words They were acceptable at one time, but these days publications bearing the words “Address Correction Requested” can and will be refused by the Post Office for including an “obsolete [and thus invalid] ancillary service endorsement”—and you’ll be stuck reprinting and rebinding your book. Under DMM F010.5, senders may use one or more of the following ancillary service endorsements to obtain the addressee’s forwarding address or the reason for non-delivery: Address Service Requested, Forwarding Service Requested, Return Service Requested or Change Service Requested. Each of these has a different meaning, so review the DMM carefully to determine which endorsement to use. Wrap it right The USPS considers half-wraps illegal unless they’re fully enclosed in a mailing wrapper. A long-standing regulation that has been enforced more stringently in recent months, DMM C200.3.5 dictates that any protective cover or cover page on a piece not completely enclosed in a mailing wrapper must cover the full height of both the front and back of the host publication and extend to within at least 3/4" of the edge opposite the fold or binding. Put it in reverse To qualify for Enhanced Carrier Route basic Standard Mail rates and carrier route basic Periodicals rates, mail must now be prepared in Line-of -Travel (LOT) delivery sequence—a sequence of ZIP+4 codes arranged in the order that the route is served by a carrier. Key point: Because books are stacked from bottom to top as they come off the line, labels provided by outside vendors must be in reverse order to accomplish the necessary LOT sequence. For more information about LOT sequence, please see DMM M050.3.4. Tell ’em who you are Periodicals that don’t include proper identification, as outlined in DMM E211.10, can be rejected by the Postal Service—meaning you’ll be responsible for reprinting and rebinding the books in question. (Note that these requirements do not apply to Standard Mail.) See the DMM for key requirements concerning location and content. File or die All Periodicals publishers are required to file Form 3526—the Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation—by October 1 of each year at the original entry post office. DMM E216.3 outlines the deadlines for publishing a complete statement of ownership in an issue of your publication. Miss these deadlines at your own risk: Publishers who do not comply within 10 days of a notice of noncompliance from the postmaster will lose their eligibility for Periodicals rates until compliance occurs. Tie up loose ends Supplements. Under DMM C200.1.5, a loose printed piece bearing the endorsement “Supplement to” (followed by the title of the publication or the name of the publisher) may be enclosed as a supplement to a Periodicals piece Key point: Supplements must contain at least 25 percent non-advertising matter—and in the case of Periodicals, advertising is defined pretty broadly, including material that “calls attention to something in order to get people to buy it, sell it, seek it or support it” and “a newspaper’s or periodical’s advertisement of its own services or issues, or any other business of the publisher, whether in display advertising or reading matter.” For a complete definition of advertising matter in Periodicals, please see DMM E211.11.1 Ride-Alongs. Implemented in February 2000, the experimental Ride-Along rate is expected to run through the end of 2001 and, perhaps, to become part of the Periodicals rate schedule. As described in DMM G094, the Periodicals Ride-Along rate of 10 cents per copy (in addition to the postage for the Periodicals host piece) applies to Standard Mail material either bound into the host Periodicals piece or enclosed in a full wrapper, polybag or envelope. To be eligible for the Ride-Along rate, a piece must
Key point: In addition to the weight restriction described above, the USPS requires that the added weight of the Ride-Along piece not affect the host publication’s processing category and automation compatibility. For example, if the host piece weighs 15 ounces, a 2-ounce Ride-Along piece will push it over the 16-ounce FSM 881 threshold and onto the FSM 1000, resulting in the loss of either the Periodicals automation discount or the Ride-Along discount rate. Under such circumstances, you may want to either increase the page count of the host piece to place it squarely within the parameters for the FSM 1000 with or without the Ride-Along, or reduce the page count to ensure that both the host piece and the Ride-Along will weigh in at or below the FSM 881 cap. Note, too, that if your publication contains an enclosure or attachment paid at the Ride-Along rate, the endorsement “Ride-Along Enclosed” must appear on or in the host publication—but cannot be on or in copies not accompanied by the Ride-Along piece. Carrier sheets. Many publishers will use a carrier sheet, or label carrier, to carry both the endorsement and the delivery address for the mail piece. DMM C200.1.10 outlines the specifications for the carrier sheet, including what must and may be printed on it. Loose enclosures. The USPS is pretty strict when it comes to defining what can be included loose as an enclosure in a Periodicals mail piece, to be paid at Periodicals rates. Eligible material includes closely related First Class pieces (such as subscription invoices or statements of account for past publication purchases); subscription receipts, requests or orders, whether prepared as reply mail cards or envelopes; and change of address cards or forms. For more information on loose enclosures, please see DMM C200.1.4. Help us help you To avoid having to add more personnel to the line and dramatically slow our new high-speed binders to accommodate mail sacks containing fewer than 24 copies, United Litho has instituted a 24-book minimum per mail sack. If your mailing list is processed by someone other than ULI, please ask your vendor to sort your list with sack breaks that will net no fewer than 24 copies per mail sack. Given that the slow-down charges involved in preparing mail with fewer than 24 magazines per sack would outweigh any discount you might gain from a finer sort, this approach will minimize your mailing and postage expense and allow us to operate at full speed. It’s also important that your mail data be submitted at the same time as your other materials. When this deadline is met, ULI is able to provide you with a postage estimate in time for you to have postage funds available for your mailing by Proof Back, as outlined in the Client Handbook. Know what you don’t know Because interpretation of the DMM can be confusing and inconsistent, what worked last time is not a reliable indicator of what will work next time. The key here is to research the postal implications at the design stage, rather than try to deal with the fallout once the piece has been printed. In your quest for knowledge, don’t overlook the numerous resources available from the USPS itself:
You can also submit a mock-up to ULI’s List Services for review and, if necessary, consultation with the Post Office. Finally, watch for the USPS Specifications seminar, presented periodically at ULI’s Ashburn facility in cooperation with Business Mail specialists from the Postal Service. Remember: Ask for help when it will do the most good—right up front! P.S. Send more money Dire predictions from the USPS of half a billion dollars in losses this year—even if the full revenue request had been implemented—mean that the Postal Service is likely gearing up for another rate filing by next year. Indeed, according to the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), the next Periodicals increase could be as much as 25 to 30 percent, and could happen as soon as the first quarter of 2002. In late February, Jim Cregan, MPA’s executive vice president for government affairs, commented, “We, and every other interested group in town, are doing everything we can to stop the Postal Service from pulling the trigger. We have two jobs to do. One is to convince the Postal Service not to file this case; the other is to get on with reforming the system.” “We all agree the postal service must be changed,” said American Business Media postal business counsel David Straus, adding, “It’s time now for the postal service to tighten its belt and recognize that it can’t continually hit rate payers with increases.” An Extraordinary Service Experience: The Music Monitor Charlie Johnson, editor for the monthly magazine The Music Monitor, hasn’t reviewed a printer’s proof in more than a year—but he’s happier with the finished product than ever before. It’s all thanks to United Litho’s PDF printing process. “Printers we used in the past worked from QuarkXPress documents,” explains Johnson. “There were all sorts of potential problems in prepress—missing fonts, text reflow. I would wait with my stomach in knots.” Now he knows that the file he sends is the file he’ll see on paper. Published by The Record Exchange, The Music Monitor is distributed as the in-house publication for three major retail record chains. With information on new music and chart listings, the magazine runs 45,000 copies per issue and is distributed nationwide. Although Johnson works on the magazine from North Carolina, the PDF process has made distance a non-issue. The magazine’s layouts are created in Quark and saved as PDFs. Then, they are burned to a CD that is overnighted to ULI and—voila!—that’s what’s printed. There is no mechanical prep, and no rounds of page proofs. Once at United Litho, the PDF is ripped through Rampage software and plates are made. Johnson is enthusiastic about the solution. “It’s just been a breeze for me to output to PDF. I’ve never seen any discrepancies between what I’ve sent and the final product.” ULI Account Manager Kathy Sparkman says a lot of the credit belongs to Johnson and The Record Exchange: “Some clients expect to have a proof stage in order to make corrections. The people at The Music Monitor take the stance that they wouldn’t be sending out the file if it wasn’t ready.” But United Litho didn’t take any chances either, as Sparkman explains: “We did testing before the job started. We then took a trip out to the customer’s site, and our technical representative, Andrew Moore, worked with them individually to show them how to set up files and save images for the PDF workflow—providing a quick set of ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. Since then, Andrew has provided ongoing consultation and follow-up as their publication has expanded.” The benefits of the process are numerous. In addition to the “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” accuracy, the PDF process can also help shave days off production. “Our job just flies through the plant,” says Johnson. And
he is happy to report that customer service is still the number-one priority
for ULI, even with the relatively “hands-off” process of PDF.
“We love United Litho,” Johnson says. “They respond immediately,
and they’re all great professionals.”
Copyright 1997 - 2009, United Litho, Inc. All rights reserved. |
