Over the last ten years the number of paper newsletters has increased dramatically; up to ten times more in the United States than previously. The same applies in Europe and elsewhere, and even as far away as Australia and New Zealand, though of course, all with somewhat lower numbers. This has happened mainly because of the current widespread growth in ownership of personal computers

A factor worth noting is that home produced newsletters may be the bottom end of the market in terms of quality etc but they are nevertheless important in the new growth and distribution of paper newsletters. The modern trend towards ownership of a desktop printer and a computer means that virtually anyone can now publish a newsletter with no extra skills or equipment.

It does not require a lot of effort to produce an electronic newsletter compared to that required for a hard copy one. The costs are insignificant too and the finished product is ready for distribution immediately without the need for further preparation, processing or, of course, printing. That is why the growth figures for e-newsletters are so much more impressive even than printed newsletters.

E-zines (or e-newsletters, as they were once known) have now become established as the principal type of communication online. They are popular now because of electronic production as well as distribution over computer networks (largely meaning, of course, the all-consuming Internet). The rise to dominance of these types of newsletters has been absolutely fantastic and goes far beyond anything that was expected. Every topic under the sun is covered in one form or another and every possible bunch of people with a common interest is now a reader of them.

Paper newsletters have a vestige of authority and permanence (because they are more tangible) that online publications cannot match. The electronic format is still distrusted because it is perceived to be too easy to fraudulently manipulate documents and too easy to accidentally erase them. You might well consider these issues to be irrelevant in the case of newsletters but it is the perception that matters.

From a practical point of view, the choice of format is often not an issue. If the target market is confined to a small area or if the people that make up that target market are not likely to be online in large numbers, then hard copy is the obvious choice. If, on the other hand, a large proportion of the potential readers are online, then an ezine is the obvious way to go. As time goes by, the trend towards the adoption of electronic newsletters is bound to continue since the number of Internet users is continuing to expand at such an incredible rate.

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