NDD, the magazine distributor which claims to be expert in this area ought to know better than to send more Australia’s Best Cars Magazine to newsagents with an expected shelf life of eight months. What is worse is that this title was supplied too late for early return in December so we are out at least a month in terms of cash-flow.
From the scale out I have seen, it appears little attention has been paid to the sales of car magazines – meaning gross over supply. Not that the RACV, NRMA, RACQ et al care. Their hands are all over this unconscionable conduct because, as publishers of the title, they set the size of the print run and this is, I suspect, what NDD must scale out contractually – with little regard to what will actually sell.
So, Happy Christmas newsagents, enjoy being ripped off by a magazine model which is stuffed at this bottom end of titles, a magazine model which despite rhetoric, is not changing. There is no need for meetings and conferences to agree on a best practice model, if it won;t sell, don;t send it, if it has a sell through rate of less than 50%, send less. NDD abuses the system and says it will talk about changes and every month the talks go on they abuse newsagents as they have with this title.
What’s worse is that the auto clubs have created a website to promote the title and do not list newsagents as outlets carrying the title. This is offensive.
I love how informative your articles are.