Advertising is a business that is fueled by creativity. Once you get a handle on how to get ideas—ideas that work—you’ll have a big advantage over the competition. No matter how much you sell, it all comes down to how much your ads will sell. When the ads get results, your advertisers will be happy. And when they’re happy, they’ll keep running ads. If you’ve ever recycled old ideas because you couldn’t think of anything better, maybe it’s time for a new approach. One way to generate ideas is to look elsewhere for a spark. For example, my wife and I recently went to a wedding.

Using lowest in-county rates available By Max Heath Postal Tips An increase in calls and emails on sampling questions in recent weeks and months caused me to update this topic on the value of sending sample copies to nonsubscribers using your 10 percent in-county “sampling” entitlement. The nonsubscriber rules in the Domestic Mail Manual are there to allow you to promote your newspaper to nonsubscribers and increase your mail delivery.

Buying signals. If we pay attention, will show us where we stand in the selling process.

Want to make your page—especially your front page—more compelling? Give it more impact? Get more readers to give it a close look? - Use a dominant visual.

New marked copy rules prevent submitting multiple copies if only preprints in editions are different

By Gene Policinski Inside the First Amendment In the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's ...

There are still a few publishers who remember the years when the greatest share of a paper’s display advertising simply walked in the door. There’d be a full-page slick from National Foods or some other grocery chain, a weekly J.C. Penney Co. display ad, another Goodyear Tire or Firestone slick needing only the local dealer’s logo and even a somewhat regular ad from the Illinois Central Railroad. All of that nationally placed advertising has disappeared from smaller communities the last 30 years.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"1781","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-medium wp-image-38 alignleft","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"300","height":"190","alt":"Foust"}}]]Have you fallen into an order-taking rut? Are you passively relying on your accounts to tell you what and when to advertise? Are you following their creative directions like a police artist (“Make the hair longer, make the ears bigger.”)? Are you keeping up with events in their industries?

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_large","fid":"1780","attributes":{"class":"media-image size-full wp-image-75 alignleft","typeof":"foaf:Image","style":"","width":"300","height":"179","alt":"max heath column"}}]]Q—How much will postage rates increase in 2016? A—This is another murky time for projections. But as of this writing, it appears that prices will actually decline sometime around April 2016.