Newsagents arrived at their businesses in the early hours of this morning to, in some cases, two and three times the usual Friday magazine delivery. Like fuel goes up on the weekend and on holidays, the quantity of magazines supplied to newsagents increases on the last Friday of the month. Magazines delivered today have to be paid for in full in three weeks. Any which do not sell (usually between 50% and 80% of what is supplied) are returned four weeks later and a credit provided (often) a month after that.
Today’s oversupply is seen by many newsagents as a grab for cash. Magazine distributors will say they have no control over when publishers release titles. It does not matter who is right about the reasons, the fact is that the last Friday of the month sucks a ton of cash out of newsagencies and newsagents are the losers.
The titles of concern are those well out of the top 200 sellers. They are titles supermarkets, convenience stores and petrol outlets refuse to sell, titles which newsagents are forced to carry because of the out of date magazine supply model which the government did not fix when it deregulated newspaper and magazine distribution in 1999.
The oversupply today drains cash and resources from small businesses newsagents. It makes it harder for newsagents to actively promote magazines in the top 200. Publishers like ACP, Pacific, Time, FPC and Emap suffer because of the junk newsagents have been overloaded with.