Go to almost any newsagency this week and you see a display promoting the 10th anniversary edition of Marie Claire. Look on the shelves and you see the 400 page magazine stacked along with the free gift on the cover.
Now go and look in the other outlets with Marie Claire. Little or no support featuring the 10th anniversary. In some cases product is shoved in fixtures which don’t hold a 400 page magazine. In other cases little care is taken to protect the free gift.
This is a perfect example of the value of the newsagent channel to publishers. The complaint add on promotion for products outside the norm.
I’m a newsagent. I like these promotions. I like that I can demonstrate my point of different.
It annoys the crap out of me that elsewhere in my business, for selected titles, magazine distributors offer terms which are inequitable.