The company also sells magazine subscriptions at a discount and advertises subscriptions along with its sweepstakes.[41] It's estimated that companies like PCH keep 75-90 percent of the fees from the original subscription, while publishers use the increased distribution to improve circulation numbers and revenue from renewals.[2][42] PCH popularized the idea of using sweepstakes to sell magazine subscriptions in the direct-marketing market and became known by detractors as a producer of junk-mail for advertising through mass-mailings.[4][41] Documents filed with the New York State Department in 1993 said that year the company mailed 220 million envelopes.