If you’re losing money on each copy, you can’t make it up on volume. Interesting report from Media Life:

Last, week, BostonNow folded, its Icelandic owners, Dagsbrun, pulling the plug after just a year. Dagsbrun came to the U.S. with ambitions to launch in a number of markets.
Last week, Britain’s Guardian revealed that thelondonpaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, lost a not insubstantial $34 million in its first 10 months in business.
And this week, Metro International, the Swedish group that owns free sheets around the world, reported that revenues fell just more than 6 percent, to $116 million, in the first quarter of 2008, with losses of $8.9 million.
Part of that reflects hefty startup costs for its newer papers, but it’s also feeling the heat of increased competition from other free papers. In its first-quarter report, management cited tougher market conditions in the U.S., Denmark and Spain. Those losses came even as the company slashed costs and closed some poorly performing papers.