The announcement by PMP that their Gordon and Gotch magazine distribution division has purchased book distributor Scribo is interesting. With more newsagents selling books it may be that the Gotch folks see good synergy. If newsagents are to be a focus it will need to be on book retail terms and not magazine terms as that is what most newsagents into books achieve today.
We should all welcome another opportunity to make money, and I do, but how much space in our shops are they expecting to take. We are already to the max. If they give us books with a return date of 12/20 like we get with AWW cook books, then we will be spending a lot of time dusting. Once again how much of our money will be tied up as we pay for them before we sell them. GG supply us with paper back westerns, we have the current one on the shelf, received 01/09/08 to be returned W49, the one’s we took off are W44, there are still W39 sitting on the shelf out back, and I have just returned W36. Why the need to have so many issues sitting around before the allocated return week ?. You would have to be mad not to want the top 10 sellers, on a sale or return basis, but it needs to be organized properly to get the full support of Newsagents. Look at the DLL series from Network, return 12/20. It’s not so bad at $2.95, but what about books worth 10 times more $$$$$$$$$$$. Bring it on, but do it right.
Danny ,everything you have mentioned is true it happens all the time . I never let anything just sit out the back it makes no money out there just send it back with your next returns .And with the dll books they get a month on the shelf and if they don’t sell then they get the flick ,and sure enough they will come in again and the same thing will happen . Iam with you in saying bring it on ,but do it right ,lets hope they do
why are you not implementing early returns policy – surely historical data will alert you to the fact that certain mags are non sellers or low volume sellers so send them back as a matter of best practice – you are simply acting as de facto warehouses for those companies.
30Years a go G/G sold books to agents in the some way as mags now .they also sold stationary to us but only by orders it was bad bad bad