Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 11, 1994                   TAG: 9408110052
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

ALTERNATIVE PHONE BOOKS TO HIT DOORSTEPS IN MARCH

Next year, though, Roanoke Valley residents may be in for a change.

Rex Story, whose company has produced an alternative telephone directory for Wilmington, N.C., for the past two years, has formed Community Directory Co. of Virginia and already is competing for the lucrative Yellow Pages advertising in the Roanoke Valley.

Like Bell Atlantic, Story plans to distribute his directories free to valley residences and businesses.

Story said Yellow Pages advertising traditionally has been a high-profit business for telephone companies, which, without competition, have raised their rates as high as the market will bear.

Yellow Pages advertising in Community Directory's phone book will sell at rates about 40 percent below those charged by Bell Atlantic, according to claims in a pricing guide provided by Story.

For example, a half-page ad in Story's directory costs $6,821, while Bell Atlantic charges $11,760 for the same ad. He also is guaranteeing that his advertising rates will not rise during the Roanoke Valley directory's first three years of publication.

Don Reid, Bell Atlantic's Roanoke regional manager, said he doesn't know enough yet about Story's company to say how it might affect Bell Atlantic's Roanoke directory. His company has faced similar competition in other localities that didn't last, Reid said.

Reid also was unable to confirm immediately the accuracy of Story's claim of Bell Atlantic's advertising rates.

Story has published phone books for cities in southern Florida and for Asheville, N.C., in addition to Wilmington. He has a directory coming out in September for Lynchburg, the first in Virginia.

Four weeks ago, Story opened area offices at 3110 Peters Creek Road. The company has 25 employees in Roanoke, including 18 salesmen calling on valley businesses, Story said. The Roanoke office will have a permanent full-time staff of six to eight people, he said.

Before he made the decision to publish a Roanoke directory, Story said he polled local businesses and found that about 80 percent of those with display ads in the Bell Atlantic book were interested in a competing directory.

White pages in the proposed directory will be organized in three columns rather than the five-column format of the Bell Atlantic directory, meaning a larger size of printed listings. Bell Atlantic is required by law to provide telephone listings for a fee to competitors like Story's company.

The names and addresses in Story's book also will include postal ZIP codes.

Story's book also will offer a service called Talking Pages, a listing of numbers that provide recorded information on a variety of topics and similar to the Roanoke Times & World-News InfoLine service.

Story's phone book will include a street map of the Roanoke Valley, community profiles, a community calendar, a list of area attractions, a directory of public parks, information on local schools and colleges and a cultural directory.

Story said he plans to distribute the directory in March, a month ahead of the normal distribution time for the Bell Atlantic book. The distribution area will be larger than that for the Bell Atlantic book, he said.

The biggest obstacle a company faces when moving into a new community is establishing credibility, said R.W. Wright, general manager of the directory's Roanoke office.

The Better Business Bureau in Myrtle Beach, S.C., which covers the Wilmington area, said it received no complaints about Community Directory Co. of North Carolina during the two years the company has published a directory for Wilmington.