Further to my post last month about Google magazine, the same publisher, Citrus Media, is behind a range of other titles offering equally questionable value. They publish Ultimate Guides for the Mac, iPod, iPhone and Apps as I understand it.
The model appears to be similar to the Google magazine – buy in content on the cheap (really cheap), freshen this up to look original and ship it out to newsagents with a sales forecast which unlocks cash for the publisher before newsagents have sold stock. yes, some publishers have an agreement with their magazine distributor which sees them paid a percentage of forecast sales immediately the title is distributed. Newsagent cash funds this.
Newsagents get the titles with a long shelf life and many do not early return, funding Citrus Media, paying them for the privilege of carrying what is in my opinion b-grade content which appears to have been created solely for the purpose of manipulating the newsagency magazine distribution model which can unlock cash flow for clever publishers.
I am told that you can assess the professional commitment of the publisher to original content by checking out the editorial team for each of their magazines. It’s the one editor for all titles.
I wish I had copies of the Ultimate Guide iPod magazines from recent years as I suspect that I would find that the latest edition recycles content from previous years with only limited new editorial content behind a fresh cover. Is it an Ultimate Guide if the content is from years ago?
The magazine distribuution model is open for anyone to access. Magazine distributors are the gatekeepers, our representatives controlling access to our channel and our cash.
On the basis of what is happening with the Ultimate Guides one has to wonder whether they are doing their job on behalf of newsagents.
As a publisher, I find this a perplexing business model. On the surface, I can’t see how these guys make money. There’s no advertising to speak of, and I am not sure if it sells. Mark, do you actually SELL many of these? Historically have they worked well?
I do however struggle to believe that they get paid in advance for copy sales. Even with a long lead time, the final sales figures must demonstrate that they aren’t selling well and the distributor will then pay less, or carry those losses forward. Distributors do not overpay publishers. Even if they have that dubious payment up front, it must catch up.
Who is the distributor? How can I get a piece of that payment up front action? It would be great for the cashflow of my business!
Would suck for the cashflow of your business though….
I regularly get sent 4 or 5 of each “ultimate” issue and have yet to sell a single copy. I now early return them as soon as they are received and they don’t even touch the shelves. There’s much better (and in some cases more accurate) information available in some of the other monthly PC based publications like Atomic, APC or PC User.
I should point out that this isn’t the only publication that I now treat like this. Those “wonderful”( yes I am being sarcastic) bagged essential/beautiful/etc mags , for the most part don’t even reach the shelves.
Carrob, sales are not good from what I see. Theft is around average for magazines. I am confident of the arrangement of being paid based on a sales estimate.
This week again we had a bagged Harpers Bazaar with the collections issue. I have nearly sold out again by making an effort to upsell to every customer who requests Harpers Bazaar and it works.
My biggest issue with bagged product is craft and motor mags which have old/ancient never current copies of back issues put in with the current issue and the customer cannot see what it is and therefore doesn’t want to purchase the current mag.
I have no idea why the publishers continue to go down this path. Maybe they think it is value for money but my experience (33 years) is that the customer is “put off” by these tactics and doesn’t buy if he/she cannot browse first.
Mark – I agree. The only way it can make money is through copy sales, and if sales are bad, then they must be getting paid in advance. If that’s the case their chickens will come home to roost at some stage. Naturally that is only my opinion – but it is based on 15 years of publishing experience.
June – We have tried the bagged magazine thing. It did not work well for us at all. I find that as a magazine buyer myself I really want to see what it is that I am getting. If I am an avid fan of a publication I would be purchasing it regardless, so there is no incremental sales for the publisher. It’s kind of lose lose all round.
Does anyone else get a spammy itunes window whenever they open the blog in their browser?
Doesn’t happen to any other page I open but this one.
If you click to close the itunes window, it shuts down the blog page completely. If you click a link on the page around the window it goes away. Weird.
Yesterday I had a customer who has bought #1 – #4 of “Bagged Mini Truckin'” offered to pay $5 for #5 (retail $9.95 including two back issues) because he already had #2 and #4 in the bag with #5 and didn’t want to pay for them again. Because virtually every one of their publications is now bagged with back issues, all they’ve done is devalue their magazine and make their regular buyers feel ripped off. As for the customer, he initially decided not to take it, but changed his mind and came back today to buy it.
@YG; not sure if serious. . .
YG, I’ve been getting this as well this afternoon.
Carrob, I wonder if that is what happened with Derwent Howard? I have no idea of the actual terms of either company but if they were similar and if they have and had a common business model then maybe.
Oh, good. Wondered if it was at my end for a while. Even did the malware scan again just in case 🙂
Gone this morning.
I think that the site was somehow under attack yesterday.
Slightly off subject but I noted that Coles was selling Disney Princess for $7.50 whilst my recommended price was $7.95. Are they now discounting magazines or was it a pricing error?
Gotch’s website does allow newsagent to change standing order flexibly but does anyone know how to get around Network’s annoyingly rigid system where we can’t reduce the order to less than two copy if we have managed to sell just one copy for the past 24 month!
Mark,
Derwent Howard were a reasonably large tech publishing company. I think they did one shot titles like these google guides etc, but I don’t think that was their core business. They had a gadget magazine called T3 which may be aware of, and (I think) a bunch of computer game magazines. Their names escape me at the moment.
Since the Derwent Howard demise there appears to be two seperate publishing entities that operate form the same office. One is Citrus Media, the other is Media Factory. Media factory publishes something called the Official Playstation magazine. Citrus media seems to be publishing the one shot guides.
It would be unfair to say anything about why they publish using two seperate companies. It may be as harmless as a publishing deal with Sony for licencing the playstation title. I don’t know.
I was never really all over the tech publishing industry. Derwent Howard seemed to come from nowhere and went supernovae before they collapsed. I don’t recall people questioning their business practices prior to the collapse.
Derwent Howard certainly had a one shot business, but they had quite a few mags as well.
Citrus seems to be a one shot specialist operating under a different legal umbrella to Jim’s other magazine publishing interests though.
Han
Yes their is a way, ring Network 1300 number and tell them you do not want this title or you want to change your S/O.
I closed my NDD account because of the amount of oversupply and now like a lot of retailers or Newsagents it is happening again.
Netonline I assume you are talking about.
thanks Derek. i was hoping there is some way to hack their website rather than calling them which takes too much time to do during business hours.