Doctor offers positive alternative to common (mis)diagnosis of newsletter industry.

Dr. Leslie Norms, the subject of our Publisher Profile this issue (p. 4), said he was somewhat depressed at the Newsletter & Electronic Publishers' International Conference earlier this month--not by the honor of being named to the association's Hall of Fame, but by the undercurrent he picked up in presentations and in the "hallway buzz" that the glory days of newsletters are past, that all the good ideas are gone, that there is too much competition.

"This created a cognitive dissonance with me," he said, "because even 'semi-retired' as I am, I see potentially good newsletter ideas every day."

Norms explained how he operates. "Here's our process. Every day we read a half dozen newspapers and magazines. When I see something that intrigues me as a possible newsletter idea--i.e., some group with a problem and a potential need for information--I cut it out. Most days the papers wind up looking like Swiss cheese."

"Step Two: I do some research in a casual way. When I have some time on my hands, such as during the monsoon season here in Naples, Florida, I'll go online. I'll search for keywords. I'll look for associations involved in the area. If I find the Cattleman's Disease Protective Association but learn it has 82 members, that tells me something. If it has 18,000, something clicks for me. I want to learn if they have a modality to get the information evidently needed.

"I'll probably print out a few relevant pages and clip them to the newspaper article, put it all in a folder. I'm not doing this from a desire to fill boxes.

"At this point I have a file of potential newsletter ideas that have passed a preliminary muster:

* They have a problem

* There are "enough" of them

* There appears to be no existing modality.

"Before we go further, I would go on to full 'due diligence,' but I see so many potential ideas, especially for business newsletters, that I don't understand why more are not being launched."

Why aren't there more newsletter launches today?

"I think I see three reasons for this," Norins said in answering his own question:

"1. Excesses of past entrepreneurs. These things may have a pendulum-like swing. I've attended newsletter conferences where publisher A or B outlined his aggressive launch-a-month campaign and a couple of those entrepreneurs went spectacularly bust. Basically they lacked fiscal discipline. I believe you can launch aggressively today but avoid past excesses.

"2. Rise of the financially oriented large corporation. I think there used to be many more small entrepreneurs in the newsletter business. I think some years ago if you took a random sample of 500 titles from the NEPA directory, 80 percent or more would have been published by individuals or small firms.

"Today I'd guess that more than half are published by large corporations or their subsidiaries. These organizations tend to have rigid financial rules. One person at the NEPA meeting told me they were evaluated quarterly. New launches are expected to be immediately profitable. Every mailing must bring a return over cost.

"I don't think that's a model conducive to creating newsletters. It's not like producing tires where you can mandate an increase from 14 to 16 an hour. It's more like cross-breeding orchids or doing research on anti-biotics. The drug you thought would cure liver disease turns out to grow hair.

"In these circumstances, there's no reward for trying anything risky. No one can be criticized for strictly following the rules. It doesn't surprise me that these organizations find the best way to grow is by acquisition. 'Established newsletters' are much easier to manage and fit much more easily into 'systems.'

"3. And the rest of the business has been brainwashed by the big corporations. They are forgetting the stories of sticking with it through the lean years at the kitchen table.

"Perhaps it's the roseate glow of memory, but I recall the young publisher who wasn't allowed to distribute his newsletter at the industry conference, so he sneaked persistently into the restrooms to distribute sample copies."

That young publisher, by the way, was Leslie Norins.

RELATED ARTICLE: Are your subscribers like this?

Leslie Norms has a theory that a great many subscriptions to successful business newsletters are sold to people who have rather prosaic (read: dull) everyday jobs.

As we reported in the last issue, he targets "the lonely person"--that is, the unsung heroes of the medical bureaucracy.

For example, The Coding Institute, which he just sold, produced dozens of "nitty-gritty" newsletters for back-office types in charge of medical documents.

In Norins's view, if anything "interesting" or "exciting" happens to someone in their profession, they'll enjoy reading about in the newsletter.

For example, if you managed a funeral home, wouldn't you want a break from reading articles on "12 Keys to Build Your Cremation Business" by reading about the director who handled John Gotti's funeral?

When Norins published the first state sales tax letter, he bemoaned the fact that a deranged man opened fire on the employees of the income tax office in one state capital.

"Why couldn't he have gone a few steps down the hall to the sales tax office?," Norins asks, "That would have been a story we could use."