Magazine publishers are engaging with newsagents this year more so than ever before. Positive changes at Universal Magazines early this year and changes at Express over the last few weeks are two examples of publisher engagement which is benefiting newsagents.
Morrison Media, United Media and some other smaller publishing companies are also engaging in a more proactive and commercial way with newsagents.
It is terrific to see these changes.
The challenge is where publishers do not engage directly and they leave it up to the distributors to completely manage the relationship. This usually does not work for newsagents. Overseas titles is an area of particular concern.
Once Australian publishers settle into their new level of engagement with newsagents, it would be in their interests and ours for them to work on the issue of overseas titles from distributors. We continue to receive too much junk, titles with sell through rates consistently at 50% or less. Anything less than 60% and many of us are losing money.
Tighter newsagent / publisher relationships can be leveraged to fix other parts of the distribution problem.
I have had an “intervention” by Alf Santomingo re my Frankie diaries and
all is now well.
Sometimes it just pays to “go to the top”
and get the problem resolved.
The distributors don’t like us overriding
them but sometimes it has to happen.
Thanks Alf, you are one of the regular
contributors here and we appreciate it.
We should all understand that we need to
help each other for our industry to thrive.