Ag master Jim Webster downsizes to one newsletter with high renewal rate, little promotion, no website, and an office near the ocean.

Have you ever wondered who wound up using Larry O'Brien's office at the Watergate after the dust from the famous break-in had settled?

The answer is Jim Webster, now publisher of The Webster Agricultural Letter, but at the time in charge of rural policy for the George McGovern presidential campaign. "Actually," Jim admitted, "my office was one floor directly above Larry's, but it sounds better when I tell it the other way."

Career stops have included editor of the South Dakota Rural Electric newspaper, a brief period with the American Public Power Association, staff work for Senator McGovern and the Senate Agriculture Committee, and service as Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Government & Public Affairs during the Carter Administration. ("That was the best job I ever had. I had a car and a driver to take me to evening cocktail receptions.")

Launches first newsletter

Webster returned to publishing with the launch of The Food & Fiber Letter in January 1981.

"For a few years, I was going to be a larger newsletter publisher," Webster said. "I purchased or launched The Dairy Industry Newsletter, The Washington Farm Letter, The Nutrition Policy Letter, and The Agricultural Credit Letter.

"I had understood that newsletter publishing was a great cash flow business. My problem was that the cash was certainly flowing, but very little of it seemed to be sticking as it passed by me."

So, in 1986, after selling one title and folding two, Webster sold The Food & Fiber Letter to a large consulting group and went along with it as publisher.

Then, after the first Clinton election, he left the consultants and went back out on his own. "I kept the ag credit letter which I retitled The Webster Agricultural Letter [apparently reflecting his increased stature among the agricultural community], and I've been publishing it since 1994.

"It hasn't changed much. I publish twice a month, six pages, price was then $297 and it's $397 today. I did two $50 jumps over the years."

Had Webster chosen to go up just three percent per year, rather than two fairly large jumps, he'd be at $399 today and might have done better avoiding sticker shock from the two big hikes.

Joint venture with Dave Swit

"In the mid-1990s, in another growth-mode plan for a couple of years, I published it as a joint venture with Dave Swit at Washington Business Information. We also launched The Washington Bakery Report, which eventually folded, and another launch which never really got off the ground and the title of which I now mercifully can't recall," Webster said.

Back as an independent publisher, Webster said the newsletter "is holding its own. The renewal rates are 90 percent plus."

50-50 split between print and online

"I have three large bulk orders which account for over 100 subs and the rest are individual. Today delivery is split about 50-50 between print and electronic editions.

We observed to Webster that 50 percent electronic delivery was a higher percentage than most publishers are seeing. He replied, "Most of the new orders I get come for the electronic version. I think those tend to be younger people. I probably know most of my older subscribers, and when I see them at a meeting I may ask if they would like to switch and the answer is almost always, 'No, I like paper. I like to put it in my briefcase.'"

Webster continued, "I haven't actually done much promotion in recent years. I hand out samples at receptions when I make speeches. I used to do about one a month of those, usually for a couple thousand per. Now I'm down to maybe three or four invitations a year which I accept."

Webster also does some freelance writing. He has a client in the U.K. who produces several newsletters and he has just cut a deal with a regional newspaper chain to write a periodic column.

Location, location. location

"I may have been wrong," he concluded, "when I said the USDA job was the best I ever had. This [newsletter publishing] may be it. I spend a lot of time over here in Ocean Pines, Mary-land. I've even found a printer here who is cheaper than what I was getting in the D.C. area, and I have the best boss in the world. He never gets too damn mad at me."

So much, I might add, for the old practice of publishing from an "appropriate" location--such as Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report in Sun Valley, the innumerable newsletters covering the U.S. government in the Washington area, or the Gaming Industry Daily in Atlantic City..

Here we have Jim Webster, a leading authority in the (largely Midwestern, I'd imagine) agricultural world, writing his newsletter "a lot of the time over here in Ocean Pines," on the Mary-land shore.

Then again, that's not as incongruous as it sounds. Jim Webster is within easy shot of the Capital, which his subscribers pay him to know inside out.

Webster. 3835 N. 9th St., Arlington, VA 22203. 703-525-4512, [e-mail]