I will be honest, since I’ve been down this route, the biggest issue is the cost of mailing out the newspaper. Local distribution is easy peasy, and I’ve done pony express relay distribution (such as getting it out to the Inland Empire, and someone takes it from there on to Vegas and Pheonix, etc.
THAT said, pony express distribution works. And it is generally easy to find locations who don’t care if there’s a paper sitting there for people to pick up.
You’re looking at roughly $3,000 overhead per week per 10,000 copies. If you aim for 100,000 copies per week, that’s a $30,000 bill each month for the first few months until you can start getting advertising revenue in. Most advertisers pay 2 months behind publishing.
You sound like an actual publisher. You’ve had to budget for these ongoing expenses. So advertisers are often delinquent in payment huh? I guess they think their client needs the ad patronage more than keeping their books in the black.