Don't reduce page count as a way to save money, especially if you're a piece-rate catalog (weighing under 3.3 ounces). This will have the opposite effect on what you're hoping to accomplish. The loss of sales and the gross profit dollars on those sales will be greater than any reduction in costs.
Adding pages is a smart, cost-effective growth strategy. I've always encouraged our clients to add pages as a way to grow. This assumes, however, that there's merchandise available to support the extra pages.
By all means, use square-inch analysis to validate page count changes. Use square-inch analysis to identify what items you should retain, drop or add to the catalog. In a properly merchandised catalog, the one-third, one-third, one-third rule will apply. This means that approximately one-third of the items will always be winners, one-third of the products will sell close to your square-inch break-even criteria, and one-third of the items will be losers. These items will need to be replaced with new products.
This means that even aside from the decision to add pages, about 30 percent of the products in a typical hard goods (i.e., gifts) catalog will be replaced each print cycle. If less than 30 percent of the pages lose money, consideration should be given to adding more pages. Add eight pages, do your square-inch analysis and determine if you should add another eight pages next time. Also keep in mind that if more than 30 percent of the pages lose money, you might want to give consideration to reducing the page count by eight pages.
It's a matter of proper balance and being careful that you don't have too many underperforming items as a percentage of the total number of unique products in the catalog. Pay particular attention to products that are being carried over to appear in the next book. Knowing when to drop a particular item is critical. Products that are repeated in a catalog will tend to have a revenue drop-off of approximately 20 percent each time. If the decrease is more than this, consideration should be given to replacing the item.
Steve Lett graduated from Indiana University in 1970 and immediately began his 50-year career in Direct Marketing; mainly catalogs.
Steve spent the first 25 years of his career in executive level positions at both consumer and business-to-business companies. The next 25 years have been with Lett Direct, Inc., the company Steve founded in early 1995. Lett Direct, Inc., is a catalog and internet consulting firm specializing in circulation planning, plan execution, analysis and digital marketing (Google Premier Partner).
Steve has served on the Ethics Committee of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and on a number of company boards, both public and private. He served on the Board of the ACMA.  He has been the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. He is the author of a book, Strategic Catalog Marketing. Steve is a past Chairman of both the Catalog Council and Business Mail Council of the DMA. He spent a few years teaching Direct Marketing at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
You can contact Steve at stevelett@lettdirect.com.