The Australian is today reporting that Burke’s Backyard could be the next magazine to be closed at Bauer (ACP). While the garden magazine space has some good titles, including Burke’s, it does not have a genuine hero title around which newsagents can build a strong in-store presence. This sees the category receive insufficient attention.
While I agree there is no stand out title in gardening I’d suggest Burke’s Backyard was the closest. If Bauer intends to close it there must be a lot of ACP editors and staff on other titles not sleeping too well at the moment worried about their future.
Gardening Australia and Organic Gardening have always sold really well for us, Burke’s we’ve been lucky to sell more than 2 or 3 for a long time now.
Being in an area known for beautiful gardens does help sales in this category.
We are regularly getting new titles so maybe some of the less popular ones need to go to make way for these new magazines.
There are only so many mags that customers can afford to buy, and only so much space in our shops.
Does any one else still wonder why Notebook magazine finished? we had terrific sales from 1st to last issue and I still get asked for it occaisionally.
Jenny we found sales of Boukes Backyard has been in freefall for some time. I think the problem was the the fact the mag was heavily cross promoted with the TV show which is defunct. Notebook was a great title and a strong seller and we still get people asking about it. I was told poor sales was the reason they stopped publishing.
Totally agree Gregg, aTV show advertising their magazine has a massive impact on its’ sales, look at Better Homes, there is always customers asking if a segment or recipe that they saw on the show the previous night is in the current issue.
Jenny could not agree more , they will flick through find the recipe and buy the magazine and i will always offer my services as a taste tester
Sorry, off topic but why is tomorrows beautiful AWW cover spoilt with a free cookbook covering the bottom half.
I want to sell the $9.95 Xmas cook book we got last week but now they have another Xmas recipe book for free with December AWW.