Many years have passed since media companies in Sweden began looking at other ways of producing content, pages and whole newspapers. Aftonbladet spelled the start of the Bulls editorial desk’s journey to success.
The year was 2009. Aftonbladet wanted to cut back its editorial department and reduce costs. It started looking around for new external outfits that could not only create content but also produce supplements and other editions. A successful venture into daily double page spread puzzles from Bulls in the summer of 2008 led to us being viewed as a secure supplier worthy of even greater cooperation.
In October 2009, Bulls produced its first edition of the Aftonbladet supplement Kryss & Quiz. The content was changed and Kryss & Quiz went from being a weekly supplement with items just piled up to being a carefully prepared crossword magazine fully comparable to the offerings put out by the dedicated crossword publishers.
That same autumn, Bulls also launched crossword products for the main newspaper, a 16-page stapled insert to Aftonbladet’s Härligt Hemma edition, 6 pages in its Sunday edition and various arrowords in the newspaper’s other editions.
Apart from a couple of internal items, Bulls was Aftonbladet’s sole supplier of arrowords at the end of the year. Bulls also took over collaboration with the Aftonbladet contributors working in the same field. This not only reduced the newspaper’s editorial input to that provided by a couple of staff, it also meant that the financial department from then on only had to deal with one invoice a month instead of having to make numerous individual payments.
In addition, Bulls soon took over contact with the readers, which further reduced the pressure on Aftonbladet. People who solve crossword puzzles are frequent email users, and changes of this kind naturally bring a response. As was the case here. However, while some readers got in touch to say they missed their favourite constructors, far more declared that they were happy to see the improvement in quality that had resulted from Bulls’ editorial input. Crossword people use email often and serve as a good reference group for crossword editors.
In the summer of 2010, the first edition of KryssExtra saw the light of day. Bulls had suggested that Aftonbladet put out a 100-page crossword magazine to test the market. It proved so successful that a further edition was issued the same Christmas. Sales of this thicker publication hardly affected the weekly magazine Kryss & Quiz, which continued to grow. The following year three editions appeared and in 2012 four editions. Six editions came out in both 2015 and 2016, and this increased to 7 editions in 2017. In 2018, KryssExtra became a monthly magazine and in 2019 all of 13 editions were published.
Over the years, of course, changes have been made in the newspaper’s other products. When Härligt Hemma was revamped and the crossword pages taken out, Aftonbladet acted on Bulls’ recommendation and increased the corresponding pages in its Sunday edition to 16. The latest addition to Aftonbladet’s crossword investment is the main newspaper’s inbound tabloid supplement Kryssbladet, which appears every Saturday.
Aftonbladet and Bulls have worked together for 10 years. And our cooperation is still developing.
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