I was premature in calling the current issue of Rolling Stone with Pink on the cover an opportunity for us. I was surprised to notice that our stock in-store is bagged. This is nuts for music titles as browsing is important to driving purchases. You only have to stand in a newsagency and watch the browsing of music titles to notice this. When I was checking it out yesterday a customer looked at the title – we chatted about the title being bagged and he agreed and expressed frustration. I understand why it’s bagged and that the publisher expects to achieve incremental sales from the extra value. My feeling is that this is not ideal for a music magazine.
it should be able to sell itself with Pink on the cover without having to add a magazine that is 7 months old on the back of it .
True Shaun but music titles are browsed a lot.
Bagged issues frustrate me as customers either rip them open of their own accord, totally ignore them, on the odd occasion ask us to open them and then those who buy generally grumble that they are receiving an old issue as a bonus which they already have. They take up extra space and I don’t like them. Even if we do see a small increase in sales of some of these bagged titles, over all it has to be a negative on the magazine department as a whole.