Sales of subscriptions to the Federal Register have fallen dramatically since the Government Printing Office made the Register available online five years ago, leading the office to announce a price increase for print copies this week.
Since GPO made the Federal Register available online for free in 1995, sales of the daily printed roundup of federal activity have dropped 60 percent. Meanwhile, online readership has soared. In 1999, readers retrieved 48 million documents from the online Federal Register on GPO Access (www.access.gpo.gov).
So on Wednesday, GPO's Administrative Committee of the Federal Register announced a 15 percent price increase for the Federal Register and related publications.
"The increases are primarily attributable to higher labor expenses, postal rates and paper costs and a substantial decline in sales of printed publications, causing upward pressure on the average cost per subscription," the committee said.
An annual subscription to the printed Federal Register will cost $638 beginning March 24.
The committee also revised its regulations to establish the online version of the Code of Federal Regulations as an official format so that the public "may fully rely on the online edition of the CFR on GPO Access as an official legal publication."
The committee announced the changes in the Feb. 23 Federal Register.