Modern Wedding is another magazine sent to newsagents to warehouse for an uneconomically viable on-sale period. It’s a thick title, we can only store two per pocket. In newsagencies without a back room, Modern Wedding takes up retail space that is costing as much as $9.00 per month per pocket to rent. Leaving Modern Wedding in the magazine pockets makes it a loss making title for shopping centre newsagents.
I suspect the publisher thinks that by providing this title on a delayed billing basis they are helping us. Delayed billing is no help at all.
Yesterday, I sent back half our stock of Modern Wedding because of the pocket cost and because it will not sell quickly enough to pay its way.
The publisher will complain that they cannot afford multiple drops based on sales through the on-sale. That is not my problem. That they send everything at once is unfair and something I tolerate less today than a year ago.
The MPA supply trial to test the draft code of conduct requires participating newsagents to not early return. That alone is enough to block newsagents participating.