Our market
Interlink’s many years of experience with the community newspaper
market has grown to include more than 1,000 daily and weekly newspapers.
Our service
Becoming the most widely used circulation management service was made
possible in large measure by our customers recommending us to their publishing
colleagues. Today our clients include key industry leaders such as NNA’s
postal guru and Landmark executive, Max Heath, and many current and past
elected leaders of state and national publishing organizations.
This level of dialogue with the industry has made it possible for Interlink
to go well beyond creating and supporting what is today the only USPS-approved
circulation-focused service for community newspapers.
Interlink’s software-based service makes it possible for a clerk
to handle your total circulation—everything from billing a renewal
to taking the last penny in postal discounts—all without being either
a circulation expert or a postal wizard.
Higher productivity, reduced training time and typically stunning postage
savings are the immediate payoffs for publishers who choose Interlink.
For the long term, choosing to establish a continuing service relationship
with Interlink guarantees that all vital circulation services will be
available far into the future.
Our staff
Interlink, like its clients, accomplishes its goals with a combination
of in-house and contract staff. Typically a dozen people
are available to tackle tasks on behalf of and to support all of our commitments
to our clients.
Located in a university community, we have an advantage in meeting our
staffing needs as we continue to grow.
Our facility
Interlink offices are located in a business complex constructed in
1998. These facilities include more efficient work areas and superior
networking and phone systems.
Interlink’s communication system includes more than 10 Centrex phone lines
plus a high-speed T1 connection to the Internet.
The office computer systems include the latest Windows and Linux
servers to manage files, Internet access, and internal and external email.
Interlink's web servers are positioned internally and externally for maximum reliability,
performance, and security.
The beginning
Interlink’s birth certificate is dated February 1980. Its gestation
stretched through the late 70s.
At the time , co-founder William Garber, Ph.D., was chairman of the
communication department at Andrews Universityand was looking for
a way to provide electronic writing and editing experience for his journalism
students—for a lot less than a $35,000, 4-station Rockwell editing
system, then the least expensive technology available.
Micro processors were just beginning to create $1,000 hobby computers.
These systems clearly had the power to be editing stations, given the
right software.
Encouraged by the academic vice-president, who in 1979 told Garber
that "a university is not an entrepreneurial organization,"
it was obvious a private business venture was at hand. At the time, Garber’s
brother Jim, then a computer programmer and system manager at the leading
Dayton, Ohio, hospital, was eager to leave corporate life. The two Garbers
and a cousin, Edward Lugenbeal, a seriously brilliant contemporary with
both a Ph.D. in anthropology and a Bachelor of Divinity degree and who
was about to leave his position, put up $2,500 each and created Interlink,
Inc., specifically to build a computer system for community newspapers.
That first Interlink system was designed on the Commodore Business Machines
8032, a system that along with the Apple II helped drive IBM into the
personal computer market. Interlink’s Publish-ER7 system did exactly
what William dreamed. Jim wrote a tight little editing program that handled
stories up to 3,000 words in length, stored them on diskette in a file
system that used common English names that were easily manipulated on
screen, and then sent these stories to just about any photo typesetter
of the day through interfaces designed and built by Interlink.
The systems were so simple they could be shipped to a new customer,
who personally hooked up the system to a Compugraphic typesetter, and
was able to begin operations all without an Interlink representative ever
visiting the shop. That commitment to simplicity continues to be the cornerstone
of Interlink’s software today.
Of course, having the computer already in the shop begged for it to also
be used for billing the advertising and mailing the papers, two more software
elements in the Publisher-ER7 system.
In fact, the Ad Billing software was first created for a publisher more
than 400 miles away in Northern Wisconsin, who met the Interlink staff
once, when the offices where still in Ed’s basement. He was spending
$3,500 monthly for a service bureau in New England to bill the clients
for his five shoppers and a newspaper. Interlink did a system at the time
for $15,000 that gave him full in-house control, cut turn around time,
and eliminated a huge amount of hand work.
Later the publisher reported that when he told the service bureau that
he was going to manage over 3,000 advertising accounts on a personal computer
using floppy diskettes, the service manager asked him what he was going
to do when the system didn’t work.
He said, "I told him, ‘I guess I will have to come crawling
back to you. But Bill Garber said he can do it and I believe him.’"
Of course, he got his bills out on time the very first month and he never had
to make the call.
Evolution
In the beginning, it was simple. Design a system and then sell as
many of them as possible.
And that is a failing business model in a market with a limited client base.
As Garbers' father said at the time,
"You need to sell something that has the potential for repeat business."
It was as though he was looking at the Compugraphic model. They first
designed a system for newspapers, moved on to offices when the newspaper
market was burned over, and fell victim to desktop publishing software
on a general purpose computer system which did to them what they had done
to Linotype.
Had Interlink stayed with just electronic writing and editing, their
original vision, Apple’s desktop publishing software would have killed
the company.
After Publish-ER7, Interlink transformed itself into a system integrator,
using its billing and circulation software as the core of systems that
added off-the-shelf editing software and hardware. At this point Interlink
was generating repeat business as annual service conracts. This was
an important evolutionary step for Interlink, once again in direct response
to publishers needs and still very much in the community newspaper market.
As publishers became more computer "literate," as the term
of the day was, they truly needed less system help. Their independence
was further encouraged by the new computer industry model, pioneered by
Dell and imitated widely, whereby factories sold computers directly to
users with no dealers or distributors involved.
It was time for Interlink to refocus, this time exclusively on software, specifically
the software which had played the key role at every stage of Interlink’s
business life.
Free of hardware, Interlink became more sharply focused, and industry
changes made it possible to create substantially more value for the client.
By the mid-1990’s, the US Postal Service was well along in
its drive toward moving much of the hand work out of the hands of high-priced
postal workers and onto the computer systems in their clients’ mail
rooms.
The postage savings were so dramatic that postal discounts for
presorting the mail inevitably more than paid for the Interlink systems that did
the work, and still does.
With clients producing more than 1,000 publications, Interlink’s
experience is duplicated nowhere else. However, the evolving industry
means learning must never stop.
Building on experience
What guides Interlink is the clear understanding of the business model
followed by almost every failed vendor to the newspaper industry.
The historical perspective began during William’s university years.
He needed typesetters for the school newspaper. He knew he had to buy
used because the paper couldn’t afford new. So he teamed up with
the graphic arts department and went looking for typesetters.
That’s how he met the production manager of the Muskegon Chronicle
who had two TXT photo typesetters he was trying to sell. These were
$75,000 machines less than 5 years before and he sold them for $2,000
each. It took a fork lift to load and unload them.
Like the Chronicle’s editorial system, the typesetters were no
longer being made and the company was out of typesetting.
Both vendors had fallen victim to a business model that depended almost
100% on new sales. So when the market veered, sales tanked and the business
went down.
Understanding those failures and our early foray down a similar path
has inoculated Interlink against that business disease.
Relationships are the future
By contrast, today’s Interlink business model is founded on a
strong on-going license and service relationship, generating a continuing revenue
stream. This has become an important sales tool. Once again, let us explain
by illustration.
Soon after moving to software exclusively, a new publisher
who had recently taken early retirement from the Baltimore Sun became
an Interlink client.
It was later that he told us specifically why he chose Interlink. He
said that he clearly understood our annual service plan and it was that
plan that is the key point that sold him on Interlink. He said it was
more than just service. It was the continuing revenue stream that would
sustain Interlink in the future that convinced him he was making a safe
choice. He explained that he had acquired too many systems that had
become orphans following the new system sales starvation death of the parent
vendor.
Interlink clients, through their licensing and service agreements with Interlink, are
not only guaranteeing that current service will meet all immediate needs,
they are also guaranteeing the future viability of their circulation system.
Interlink’s business model also streamlines client budgeting and
avoids unexpected client expenditures.
The future publishing paradigm
Interlink believes that newspapers will be printed for decades to
come. Circulation management will continue to include all of today’s
tasks as new or evolving technology and demands sweep over the circulation
component of the publishing world.
Reproduction is getting better and better, while growing equally less
costly. However, distribution and subscriber relations are becoming increasingly
more complex and demanding.
In the postal area alone, refreshing your lists is already on a 60-day
cycle. We anticipate that soon it will be totally online and in real time!
In the end, we believe that the paradigm shift facing newspapers will
not be from atoms to bits. The shift will be from technology as system
to technology as service.
Interlink has already made that shift on behalf of its clients.
