No, free puzzle books won't save you either

This is true for both small daily and nondaily papers and the self-allegedly mighty Dallas Snooze.

I speak from experience on the former side of the coin. A previous newspaper, when moving from daily to nondaily publication, thought that adding a puzzle book to one of the triweekly print days would sweeten the downsizing pot.

(Sidebar: I have NEVER understood papers who, when they do downsize, don't do it in the smallest increment possible. That is, if you don't want to be a six-day daily, go to a five-day daily. Don't go to a tri-weekly, like this place did, or worse, other places that go from six-day to semiweekly. SMH.)

Anyway, no, that didn't work.

But, wait! In the tradition of the CueCat (or similar stupidity adopted by the papers of dumb fuck Deano Singleton), an initial failed stab at a paywall, a second failed stab with dual paywalls, including a premium paywall touted by a former Google VP who thought people didn't know what AdBlock was and that Snooze digital subscribers would pay more for an ads-free version, and various other online mistakes —

You get a 48-page puzzle book if you become a print subscriber.

(Sidebar No. 2 before I go on. I have also never understood papers who offered premium paywalls that offered a website free of ads as part of the inducement. Yes, digital advertising pays bupkis back to you and continues to decline, but at least in theory, "eager" customers behind a paywall are more desirable ones. In any case, you're telling advertisers you think their content is worth crap with a premium website. Plus, the typical newspaper probably does no advance number crunching to find out if they'll actually come out ahead on this deal or not.)

Anyway, that 48-page book is just monthly, not weekly.

BFD.

The previous paper I was at offered 16 pages weekly, at that little bitty triweekly.

I mean, if you do think this would boost circ, you run it every week. Otherwise, people who actually are interested in puzzles and don't do the NYT crossword online, or old ones for free online, buy just that one issue a month at a newsstand and that's that.

Once again, Belo Blows.

But .. it's the ULTIMATE Puzzle Book. Because it's from THE Dallas Morning News.