Why the increase in Your Trading Edge magazine?

Check out our sales and return data for Your Trading Edge magazine.  Click on the image for the details.

We should be getting four copies of Your Trading Edge based on sales data. The geniuses at Gordon and Gotch disagree.  They or their systems increased us from form to eight and then to nine. There is no justification for this.  I looked through the latest issue to see if it was special in any way, if it could generate extra sales. I found nothing out of the usual.

So why the increase in supply?  All I can put it down to is Gotch having extra stock and needing to put it somewhere. Gotch people will deny they di this. They have denied such behavior to me in the past. I don’t believe them. The only alternative is that their allocations system is stuffed and I think that is more unlikely than them deliberately sending stock they know I have no hope of selling.

Magazine publishers should look at this data. Newsagents have this detail available at their fingertips at their sales counters.

Click on the image and see the detail for our newsagency. You will see why newsagents make irrational early return decisions. They will see oversupply like this situation and strike back without thinking. They will strike back for cash flow reasons and to punish Gotch – they will often not care which publisher they hit.

This is why there are so many irrational early returns.

If you publish titles distributed through Gotch you need to ask them how they respond to irrefutable evidence like this.  Publishers tell me that early returns are killing the newsagency channel for them. I agreed with that.  However, I do not agree that all early returns are the fault of the newsagent. There are many titles oversupplied like this example of Your Trading Edge. A newsagent with 50 or 100 of these unjustified oversupply situations a month is sure to strike back. It wears you down. Especially when you get spin and lack of concern from the distributor.

If you wonder why newsagents are angry, the answer is here.

If you wonder why newsagents early return any title without thinking, the answer is here.

If you wonder why newsagents are reducing magazine space, the answer is here.

If you wonder why newsagents leave the channel, the answer is here.

Fix this problem and you strengthen the newsagency and channel and, maybe, sell more magazines. Seriously!

There are people at Gotch who think I have an obsession about their business and criticize it unfairly. I’d welcome an opportunity to engage in a public fact-based debate on any Gotch related issue I raise here.

Footnote: based on the latest issue of the title I’d accept a supply increase to five. However, Gotch would not have used that data for the latest issue’s allocations.