The science of magazine allocations continues to amaze me. We did not sell any copies of the launch issue of World of Knowledge. Believing in the title, we promoted issue 2 as I documented here. We sold out our allocation, ordered more and sold some of the extra copies – ten copies of issue 2 all up. Network Services, demonstrating its allocation prowess, sent us 3 copies of issue three. This is despite them knowing that sales of issue 2 were strong for us by the time they did (or should have done) their allocation. Three was never going to be enough. We’ve ordered more and are awaiting approval for that. We’ve sold one copy and should sell the other two in the next day or two.
This is a story for magazine publishers. Take control of your allocations and use current sales data from newsagents when setting the allocation. Better still, give newsagents control – we want what you want … more sales of magazines. I am sure if I had control for my newsagencies magazine sales would increase.
Aside from the issue of allocations … we also promoted this title (we used a small off-location display) and it has been a great success for us. 18 copies of issue 1 and 21 (sold out) of issue 2. This for a store which can hardly move a copy of any science/news/documentary magazines.
I actually think a similarly themed partwork could do very well.
Mark, Bauer allocate their own magazines through their dedicated circ and allocationa team, not NDC. NDC are just their trucks/billing..this is how it was when I had contact with them in my past life and my understanding it hasn’t changed.
Yes Jeff – I forgot this was a Bauer title. Maybe those same people could fix the gross oversupply of Cosmo Bride and AWW.