Magazine Subscription Rates to Rise

Effective 1 September, subscription rates for all three of the Church magazines will go up. The Ensign, now $6 a year, will be $8; the New Era and the Friend will go from $4 to $6 a year.

This change has been made necessary by rapidly rising publication costs, according to Verl F. Scott, business manager for the magazines. The three magazines are, and always have been, self-sustaining. Since neither advertising nor general Church funds underwrite current production costs, subscription income is the basis for funding the operating budget.

Costs have risen about fifty percent on the New Era and the Friend since the last subscription increase in 1975, and “very substantially” since the last price increase for the Ensign in 1978. Annual postage increases have been between fifteen and twenty percent. Paper and printing have averaged a ten to twelve percent increase annually, with other costs rising by about the same percentage.