BoSacks Speaks Out: Publishers Clearing House and the Art of Selling Dreams (and Discounts)

Once upon a time, before cookies tracked your every click and influencers sold you toothpaste between breakdowns, there was Publishers Clearing House, a direct-mail deity that turned magazine subscriptions into a carnival of hope, hype, and heavily discounted paper. It wasn’t just marketing; it was mass hypnosis via sweepstakes and a business model so lopsided it made used car salesmen look like saints.

The Subscription Gold Rush (or Fool’s Gold?)

In the 1990s, PCH was the Willy Wonka of publishing, minus the chocolate, plus a 74% to 90% commission. That’s right, publishers handed over nearly the entire subscription price for the privilege of being included in a sweepstakes envelope stuffed with dreams and desperation. Why? Because circulation was king, and inflated numbers meant inflated ad rates. It was a beautiful illusion: sell your soul for scale, then sell that scale to advertisers who didn’t ask too many questions.

And here’s the kicker: magazines were treated like cheap commodities. The industry spent decades training consumers to expect glossy, content-rich publications for pennies on the dollar. PCH didn’t just exploit that mindset; it helped cement it. We’ve got years of work ahead to undo the damage, to remind readers that magazines aren’t disposable junk mail but cultural artifacts, experiences, and gateways to literacy. They should be expensive and valued. We’ve completely failed to teach that lesson.

I lived and worked through the glory years of print publishing. I know the theory and the practice, selling subscriptions for pennies just to get the chance to upsell later, or to pad a database that could be monetized through advertising. At McCall’s, we had a circulation of 6.5 million. How much of that was junk? Cheap subscribers who barely read the cover line?

I have no idea. But the bean counters made it work. They always did. And Publishers Clearing House rode that wave like a champion surfer, until the tide turned. No matter how many times the upper publishing crust tried to explain the brilliance of the model, it never made sense to me. It was a house of cards built on discount addiction and statistical theater.

The House of Cards Begins to Wobble

Of course, when your business model relies on sweepstakes, aggressive data mining, and the occasional whiff of regulatory scandal, the clock is ticking. PCH’s revenue didn’t just decline; it fell off a cliff, bounced twice, and landed in bankruptcy court. From $854 million in 2017 to $182 million in 2024, the company went from subscription savior to cautionary tale faster than you can say “You may already be a winner!”

Legacy: One Giant Check and a Million Tiny Regrets

Let’s be fair: PCH left a mark. The Prize Patrol, the oversized checks, the stunned homeowners, its kitsch, it’s Americana, it’s marketing theater at its finest. But behind the confetti was a business model built on discount addiction and regulatory roulette. Today, the brand survives as a pop culture footnote, while its once-mighty subscription engine rusts in the attic of publishing history.

And as we sift through the rubble, we’re left with a sobering truth: the publishing industry sold its own value short. We let magazines become synonymous with sweepstakes bait and impulse buys. Now, we’re fighting to reclaim their dignity, as luxury items. With a meaningful, experiences worth paying for. The road back is long. We’ve got to reeducate the reader, revalue the product, and stop pretending that mass circulation was ever the same as meaningful engagement.