Several craft titles this month have what appears to be a flyer promoting the free magazine which comes with each title. It’s only when you take out the cardboard flyer that you see it’s not really there to promote the free magazine. No, this flyer is there to try and get readers (or browsers) of the magazine to visit their website and sign up for a free digital edition of the magazine.
While publishers are at liberty to make any offer they choose inside their pages, that they are doing this on the back of newsagent generosity is, for me, a question of ethics.
Newsagent fund these products into our shops. We pay for them before they are sold and have to wait sometimes two months to get a refund on what has not sold. We pay for the labour to keep them tidy and we pay for the titles stolen. We only make money if we sell the product.
This flyer can be seen by browsers and I suspect this is what the publishers would like. It is certainly part of their pitch to move readers from the print to an online edition – and I am part of their push to achieve this.
Some magazines will move online and cease print publication. It is inevitable. Publishers who want to achieve this should work with newsagents and respect our efforts on their behalf. Going behind our backs is disrespectful.
I note that I only found the flyer when it had been removed from a magazine.
The titles, by the way, are: Papercraft, Beads etc, Downunder Quilts and Scrapbooking for keeps.