Seriously, people still use phonebooks? I don't think I've had a phonebook in my apartment for a few years. Seems like a huge waste of paper to me.

YES! I mean, it might put the phone book people out of business... but really they're just ripping off local small business owners who are under the mistaken impression that people still use phone books.

My apt. building currently has a stack of at least 30 books in the hall, waiting to be moved to the dumpster.

They @esd2020: At least yours are in the hall. Here they sit outside molder until someone drags them to the dumpster.

What a waste of resources. I hate phone books. We moved from a rural location to a metropolitan location a few years ago and were inundated with multiple, huge phone books. They do nothing but annoy me, because it's a waste, and I have to haul them to recycling.

You'll be sorry the next time you have to prop up the TV stand by 4 inches.

I advertise my computer repair business in the yellow pages. For me, it's the best form of advertising: it's durable (unlike the newspaper), relatively cheap (unlike newspaper, radio or TV), and it works when the customer's PC does not.
So far, Internet advertising is worthless to me.

phone books are useful for ripping out pages to help start a fire!

I like phone books every once in a while, particularly the takeout/delivery section that I find is easier to use than the internet. Additionally, the phone books will include menus from those places who wish to pay for them.

I've gotten 6 phone books delivered since I moved into this house March of this year. I've only kept one, and that one is just the right height to keep the little TV in my home office at perfect viewing level. I've never looked inside it, though.

At the apartments I used to manage, I'd have to haul a load to the recycler 3 or 4 times a year since they always managed to bring them when all the students were on break (and rain was on the way).

Yeah, opt-out would be great.

This is a funny thing to see today because on Friday the phone book was delivered to my apartment complex. I left mine in the hall outside my door. Why? I don't want it, need it, etc. Google works great. Seriously folks.

@esd2020: The idea of "small businesses need phone book advertising" falls flat when every other business in your field also has ads.

In my field (bankruptcy attorneys), I can't compete with people who can afford half-page or full-page ads. Why should I pay for a smaller ad? I'll advertise somewhere else.

Somewhat more than half of the phone books I see get recycled unread, and if someone actually does need one, there's a mountain of them in the lobby of my building every book delivery season.

Maybe I don't understand business, but wouldn't a company who pays millions to produce phone books want to know which of the people they give them to never use the things? It wouldn't make the phone books any less effective, but it would make them cheaper to produce.

Our last apartment complex was inundated with frickin' useless phone books. Every other month someone would dump a stack of them outside our apartment. Different companies every time too! I used to drag whole stacks of them down to the recycling room in the basement. It was such a waste, it was really annoying. In our new building it seems that the doormen have told the phone book delivery people to get lost because I haven't seen hide nor hair of a phone book. Yay!!

Wait, why would you want to give phonebooks to people who just want the choice not to receive them? They're going to throw them out anyway. This would be doing them a favor: target only the people who WANT the books and will actually look at the ads. Let the people who don't want them not have them.

I'm having a hard time imagining an answer to a question beginning "Should consumers be able to opt out of..." that isn't no.

@williehorton: Are you actually getting responses from the phone book ads you run? Because based on what I read here, you're paying for a lot of thrown away ad space. I'm not being flippant; I'm genuinely curious as to whether businesses that advertise in the yellow pages actually see a better response from it (than, say, online).

@varro: I had a friend with the same problem: he wasted his share of a huge settlement on a full-page ad in the local phone book. Unfortunately, all the bigger law firms had two-page spreads.
Increase in business: about zero.

My ad competes by content, not size, and I also have a "head of category" display ad in-column at the very beginning of the 'Computers-Svce & Repair' category. It definitely works for me, paying for itself about 10 or 15 times over each month... but it wouldn't work if I were a lawyer!

@williehorton: And, btw, might I add: you should be especially supportive of consumer opt-out. Even if you get better responses from YP, a consumer who wants to opt-out and not receive a phone book is probably not your target market anyway. The publishers don't want opt-out because then they will have to charge you less for your ads.

@Dobernala: I suspect they charge for their ads based on X number of deliveries, regardless of whether or not people ever open the things.

I would actually opt in for one company's phone books but I wouldn't waste time with the other. At base, though, I think it's absurd that customers wouldn't have the right to say no to get something dumped on their property.

@humphrmi: Last year, I used "tracking numbers" forwarded to my main phone to answer this very question. They sent me a report each month, and I was getting dozens of calls per month on each tracking number.
This year, however, they wanted to charge me for the tracking numbers, so I ditched them and put my main number in all the ads.
I definitely get at least two or three calls per day from new customers who found me in the Yellow Pages. I don't do any other advertising, and referrals always identify themselves as such.

What if we all took our unwanted phonebooks and left them of the front step of the phone company (or printer, etc) that published it?

@humphrmi: I can see his point. If your computer is broken, how are you going to get online to find a computer repair place? Next step, go to the phone book.

For pretty much everything else, if you can't find it with google, it doesn't exist.

awww <3 Worcester <3

@humphrmi: I am extremely supportive of opt-out: I don't want the damn things on my lawn either!

I'm a bottom-feeder. My business is so small, with such low overhead, that I only need to book about fifteen hours a week to do well. The customer base I need to do that is less than half a percent of the local population. The phone book helps me reach that many people, and more, without worrying about losing people who opt-out.

I like and prefer my phone book to the Internet, but if someone wants to opt out, they should be able to. I don't get why the phone book companies are against this. If it's going straight to the dumpster, they're not reaching anyone and they eat the cost of printing it.

Not allowing customers to opt out of this junk mail is the only thing keeping these companies alive. If people could tell the various publishers to get lost, their distribution numbers would drop, people would stop advertising and before you know it, they'd be gone for good. When I switched from Vonage to Comcast, I apparently got added to the "send anything you can" list. In 3 days time I had 5 phone books/yellow pages on my doorstep AND calls from each company asking if I enjoyed the valuable coupons in the packages. When I told them I had already thrown them all out, they seemed surprised.

I might add that there is no {risk | hope} of customer opt-out here in Delaware. The Legislature can't agree to wipe their butts, let alone challenge businesses who throw crap on our lawns.

I never know what to do with the MANY phone books I receive. Seriously, I get several of them. Completely unnecessary.

I have an annoying neighbor who never bothers to pick his up, either. He has a good 10+ of them sitting beside his door.

Yes! I've gotten 4 so far this year and I don't want or need them. Good thing we have a recycle bin out by the trash.

@Dobernala: Because it's just like TV advertising; they can say they reach "x" number of people and charge accordingly. For every person that opts out, that's less they can charge for ads. It's in their best interest to deliver as many phone books as possible, even if the address is abandoned or non-existent.

@Pylon83: Actually, in my job (running construction projects in multiple states) I like having a copy of the local phone book so I can find all the businesses in the area, including those w/o an internet listing.

Depending on where you're looking, the number of businesses that are in the phone book and NOT to be found online can be significant (that's been very noticeable for a project we started in MS)

For my home though, I don't even have a landline and I still got 4 or 5 books this past Spring. That seems a bit much.

I've been writing and following phone books and how much I despise them. People CAN opt out of phone book delivery here in Denver - however they have to provide their phone # and address.

I've posted twice on how annoying these books are - and received defensive made up numbers from Ken Clark, head of the Yellow Pages industry. (A dying industry at that)

He's peppered my and other blogs with comments on how great phone books are:

[www.futuregringo.com]

Here's how to opt out - with another defensive angry retort by Ken.

[www.futuregringo.com]

Also what's even more laughable is that phone books create their rates based on distribution. Are circulation numbers, (which are used for ad rates,) based on DISTRIBUTION? Or are they somehow whittled down to actual customer USE.

If myself, other consumers, and businesses choose to dispose of just 20% of the phone books thrown about the city that's a huge discrepency. I can't see how its ethical to use the total distribution number in front of a client.

Is the "disposal" factor taken into account when pitching clients distribution numbers?

Also last year Seattle's alternative weekly covered this - and they collected the mountains of books and dumped them off back at the publisher:

[slog.thestranger.com]

Directly from my driveway in to the recycle bin....

I live in a large high-rise building. Out of over 100 phone books, only about 4 are taken, the rest are eventually carted off in their big plastic bundles to the trash. What a waste. I've only seen people who do not ever want a computer/internet take them. Huge waste. Too bad we can't all get cheaper phone service if they cut back on production and made them an item folks had to buy or request.

Here's the problem with most advertising for repair services: it is delivered when people do not need the product.

When I advertised in the newspaper, for example, it cost four times as much as my Yellow Pages ads. By the end of the day, virtually every single copy of my ad was lining a catbox. The problem is even more acute with radio and TV: unless the customer is in front of their dead PC and listening to your ad, they don't call you.

When something breaks, potential customers don't search through the newspaper, or turn on the radio, or watch TV, hoping to see an ad for a company that might help them. They pick up the annual paper "directory" that lists all the local businesses, and peruse the ads in the appropriate category.

In any kind of repair business, if you ain't in the phone book, you ain't open.

IMHO. IANAL. YMMV.

To all those who question "why don't the companies save themselves money and print less"

Its about circulation: The more eyes they SAY they reach, the higher the rates are to advertisers. I don't they volunteer the "disposal factor" to clients.

I don't know the difference in price between printing 200,000 vs 250,000 - but the rates that 250,000 command would be much higher and more than pay for any additional printing costs.

Its just like when they give away the Sunday paper for free.

"Wow look at how many people read the paper" -- as I pitch it into the dumpster.

Now, I should disclose, I'm in my early 20s and I don't own a home.

Okay. That out of the way. We get our phone books and immediately recycle them. I use the internet or friends/family for business suggestions. Maybe, someday in the future, I'll want a phone book. But in the meantime... I'm good.

The phone book is in the same boat as newspapers ads and even ads on tv (to some extent). You're trying to promise someone that people will see them and use them in a resource that the client themselves hardly uses anymore.

It's just another evolution in the changing world of advertising.

@jamesdenver: Remember when USA Today got caught counting all the copies they gave to hotels as part of their paid circulation?

@williehorton:

Willie in the past five years I've needed furnace repair, plumber, tile guy, hot tub heater repair person - and I've used word of mouth of internet for every single one.

Sorry to be such a post hog - but one last thing that makes the internet far superior to the yellow pages: REVIEWS. If a company has a history of botching things up the phone books won't tell you that. But a quick Google or local Citysearch will. That's important knowledge you don't get via the dinosaur.

Someone posted this asinine comment on my site when I questioned the need for phone books:

There is one function in which physical phone books have an advantage oner the web: Looking up businesses. If you want to find a lumberyard or a tailor in your town the phone book works extremely well and the web works extremely badly.

Assuming this wasn't a joke, I replied:

I typed "tailor, 80206″ into Google and found 10 tailors within a mile of my house. You can't get more local than that, and it took me all of two seconds.

If I searched "tailors" in a phone book I'd have to pore through businesses from one side of town to the other. If I'm looking for something CLOSE to me, (or local,) a phone book will provide a large percentage if irrelevant returns due to outlying locations.

Sites like Google and City Search provide even MORE local detail by allowing me to drill down my results, and they allow the "long tail" of specific businesses to wag right into my neighborhood or anywhere else I want to find them.

Not only that, but in addition to finding businesses on mobile devices or using GOOG-411, I can also see customer reviews, so if a certain tailor has a history of botching clothes I can avoid them. User reviews are extremely important to people today in making purchasing decisions.

God yes. I tried to stop them, but they just keep on coming . . . and go straight through the back door to the recycling bin.

I can tell you one group that definitely uses the phone book: business-to-business telemarketers.
I get about ten calls a week, looking for "the owner."

@jamesdenver: Yeah, but you're not my target customer.
You're probably not downloading spyware, and you can obviously figure out how to Google stuff.
Plus, you can actually access the Internet. Half of my initial customer contacts start out with "I can't get online..."

@B: Advertising rates are set based on circulation. If they circulate less phone books, even though the count now reflects who reads it, it means that they can't charge as much for their advertising.

Yes, yes, and YES. We get a phone book every single year, and we NEVER use it - thanks to google maps. The stupid thing sits around collecting dust until one of us finds the time to dump it in the trash & take it out. It's not a huge annoyance, but it is a huge waste of paper.

The Yellow Book (pictured above and in the post) is basically spam in physical form. It just has listings from those who paid to get in it. It is basically useless, unwanted spam. I remember they had some bad TV commercials touting how brilliant it was.

I also think they employ some aggressive marketing techniques to get ads in their spam publication, too.

On the other hand, the real Yellow Pages, in my case produced by Verizon, actually can be useful. Say you have a power failure and can't get on the internet and need an electrician.

Often it is much more useful to grab the Yellow Pages where, shock of all shocks, you find businesses that don't turn up in an internet search - even the phone company's online Yellow Pages.

Plus, there are many people who aren't on the internet who use it and they can be good emergency booster seats for kids.

Now notice in the photo above that the size of the Yellow Pages has actually shrank from about ten years ago, well at least in New York. That shows a reduction in the amount of paper needed and I think most of the paper they use is recycled anyway.

In short, real Yellow Pages are a keeper while Yellow Book and any other bits of physical spam should be treated as the unwanted litter they are.

Eh, I'm torn. When we don't have internet for whatever reason- or are, gasp! limited to dial-up- the phone book is a real life saver. I also like to use directories to find local businesses, but it's increasingly easy for even the smallest mom and pop company to make their presence known online. (And that's really great, don't get me wrong.)

Overall the phone book is probably pretty wasteful, especially in urban areas where internet cafes and libraries are just a few blocks away and high-speed internet is widely available. Opting out I can support, but hopefully they don't eliminate deliveries all together or begin charging for them.

This is all personal opinion and personal history talking, so yeah.

This discussion is very important to me, folks:
When the phone book does stop bringing me new customers, I will need a backup plan.
Thanks for helping me create one.

@Triborough: I agree 100%.
The phone company's directory brings me results. The Yellow Book brings me nothing except a monthly bill.

I cut them down from a $110/month display ad to a $17/month name-only listing this year. Next year, they get NOTHING.