I was on The Age website today and on the home page there is a link to iSUBSCRiBE, the online magazine subscription business. At iSUBSCRiBE you have access to many magazines for home delivery at prices which deliver considerable discounts. Donna Hay – 40% off; Better Homes and Gardens – 20% off; and so on.
I appreciate that Fairfax, publishers of The Age, are at liberty to attract advertising revenue. I wonder, though, if they have an obligation to support newsagents since they are their key distribution and retail network? I wonder this especially given that the iSUBSCRiBE folks are able to offer cover price discounts for magazines whereas newsagents are not. Sure iSUBSCRiBE is offering a long term subscription for a discount. Newsagents do that too but they are not able to offer the discount – especially given that they only make 25% off the cover price for each sale.
On the one hand Fairfax say they support newsagents yet on the other they are happy to make money from a business which directly and aggressively competes with newsagents and which does so based on business terms which are not available to newsagents.
I wonder how Fairfax would feel if newsagents had an alternative offering for consumers which competed directly with a core business of the Fairfax newspapers? Would they sit by and allow newsagents to promote and develop this hypothetical business which competed with The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald? Based on the iSUBSCRiBE I’d expect them to.