It's a tough business, launching a newsletter.

What are the odds on successfully launching a newsletter? Probably greater than they were 25 or 30 years ago simply due to increased competition, but the question isn't easy to answer.

Years back, NL/NL used to publish a sort of "Where Are They Now?" periodic feature in which we went back to talk to publishers mentioned 2 years previously (then-publisher Howard Penn Hudson used to say it took 2 years--after the first renewal cycle--to judge whether or not a new newsletter was a success). Usually only about 50 percent (or less) were still in business published by their original founders.

Established publishers often planned several new launches a year. Typically at least one would fail in the test stage and Vol.1. No. 1 (or No. 2) was never published. Is that a newsletter that failed? Did it ever exist?

Publishers with a number of titles in one area, education or communications, often launched spin-offs with the knowledge they could be folded into an existing title if they didn't take wing. This led to some lame ducks being nurtured longer than was wise. (I did a sort of poll once in which key staffers said their biggest problem was "the boss's unwillingness to admit he's ever had a bad idea.")

"Knew nothing about newsletter publishing or marketing at the time"

I thought about the odds for and against when Bert Dohmen told me in a recent Publisher Profile interview, discussing the launch of The Wellington Letter in 1977, that he "knew nothing about newsletter publishing or marketing at the time," a statement I've heard through the years from a considerable number of successful publishers. (In fairness, beginning publishers who launch in ignorance and fail don't wind up, years later, being profiled by NL/NL.)

Bert gives a lot of credit to peers willing to share and especially to the association conferences for helping him learn what to do (and, importantly, what not to do).

This "education function" has been a valuable tool for the association through 30 years in gaining new members.

When I stop to add it up, my guestimate would be that since 1977, SIPA has enrolled at least 4,000 new members, probably closer to 5,000.

Where did the other 88 percent go?

But today association membership is about 600 publishers. Where did the other 88 percent of members-at-one-time go?

I'm sure there are a few who decided they'd gotten everything the association had to give them and some others who felt the dues had gotten too high.* In my 15 years there were a handful who went away mad for some reason or another. And a larger number, maybe a couple hundred, were, over the years, acquired by a larger publisher.

As a rough guess, that still might leave about 4,000 of those members "unaccounted for." I assume they either never launched the newsletter they were thinking about or they launched and failed, either immediately or after a year or so of trying to keep their head above water.

Success not as easy as it looks

The answer is success in newsletter publishing is not as easy as it looks--despite the number of "Bert Dohmens" who wandered into the business with an editorial idea and not much else and succeeded.

I reviewed 30 past Publisher Profiles still on my hard drive (omitting 2nd generation publishers), and I found 50 percent--15 of them--who had had essentially no publishing experience when they launched their newsletter.

The other 50 percent were split almost 50-50 between those with previous newsletter experience and those with other publishing experience, mostly in magazines.

What the second generation publishers had in common with many of the first group is that they didn't intend to be newsletter publishers either. For example, Benj Steinman said, "I wanted to write fiction," and Margaret DeWitt said, "I planned to be anything but a newsletter publisher."

* In 1979 the association dues minimum was set at $150. Today it is $445 but a straight-line extrapolation of the Consumer Price Index would have it at $485.