Independent magazines must be of interest to one or two university lecturers based on questions I have received in the last couple of weeks. At least one business course appears to be using the challenge of the distribution of independent magazines as a case study. The questions from some of the students are excellent. A common question is – why not go direct to a newsagent, why would I use a magazine distributor? This is a question I have for independent publishers too.
From my experience there are two main reasons.
1) In the UK and in Thailand (my two areas of personal experience) many newsagents do not allow publisher to deal direct.
2) Many of the smaller (and independent) publishers don’t have the resources to be able to handle distribution themselves.
Andrew, while we are happy to work direct with publishers, it is a challenge for them given that there is no unified access point except the distributors. You are right about the resources – many have enough to keep the title going but not to distribute and promote themselves.
Dealing direct with newsagents is likely to, for most publishers, significantly reduce the economies of scale derived from distributors. It would also decrease the efficiency newsagents gain by only having to deal with a limited number of suppliers.