We received two copies of The Australian Top 100 Graduate Employers. We have early returned this title as it sits in a segment which does not work for us, we do not have a spare pocket and it’s expensive. I made a judgement call on these factors and knowing what I need to name from each pocket each week to pay for space.
The delay of billing for the title to June did not enter into my consideration and nor should it. The value of a magazine title to any newsagency is profit and not the timing of payment for stock.
I agree.
For anyone to put forward the delayed billing aspect of the magazine model as somehow being of benefit to Newsagents is ridiculous.
For Publishers or Publishers affiliates to do so is just plain insulting to ones intelligence, given that a lot of magazines selected for that aspect are unsellable crap that that even the duopoly wouldn’t touch.
I always view such offerings with a great deal of suspicion, so if Publishers are thinking it’s a selling point to me, they’re dreaming.
Mark if you early return you still don’t get a credit until the DB date because they won’t credit what they haven’t yet billed.
How do you then keep track of the fact that you have early returned it?
June – it’s a nightmare.
Well said Dennis.
Delayed billed magazines get the same treatment as any other mag. If its rubbish it goes straight back as well.
Delayed billing should be banned.
It’s probably self explanatory, but could someone tell us interested parties in a little more detail just how “Delayed Billing” works, and how it is supposed to be of benefit to NAs ?
We get the stock and instead of being billed the month we receive it, we are bulled some time in the future, prior to when the title is returned. It hurts us because publishers use this to justify sending us stock for a long on-sale. An on-sale of more than 30 days is of no interest to me.
So with the titles on DB, you don’t actually know when a bundle of mags will appear on your invoice ?
It could be anytime in the future ?
1 month, 3mths, 6mths or longer ?
Lance, a delayed billed invoice will have the date it is going to be billed on it. It also comes through edi showing it’s delayed billed although retailer captures the date it’s arrived. An arrival report showing the billing date is useful to identify these invoices.
I go into retailer and change the date to the first Saturday of the month, the month prior to billing. ie a 3 month delayed billed invoice due on 20th of June, I will change to the 1st Saturday in May. NDC start every month with me at $2,500 to $3,000 in delayed billed invoices due that month.
June, when I return delayed billed titles I early return them separately and then keep the return with the delayed billed invoice.
Bill isn’t is a pain – this extra work so a publisher can think they are helping us. Nuts.
Thanks Bill, I have been sending them back and hoping I get the credit but I will be more careful now. I started off keeping a book about them but getting all the staff to update the book became a problem (??????)
I agree with Mark that we shouldn’t be subjected to DB at all.
It is simply not in our interest.
Mark, yes it’s extra work, but I find it helpful in reconciling invoices and credits months after the event. I would prefer no DB at all.
The latest annoying delayed billing scam is all of these mag-books. These smaller titles get lost on the shelf and don’t sell. They probably fall into the bottom category of the sales “inefficiency” of 25% meaning I have to keep 4 of each for every 1, if I ever happen to sell one, or wait for a blue moon before I’ll be able to request it be deleted, only to have it re-distributed in 12 months time and the cycle begins again.
We need to push the stock-holding to sales ratio. No-where is there a ceiling on how much a dist can continually push on us versus what we are actually selling.
we have received 30 Lovatts Mega xword mags, delayed billing but have never sold more then 10 of each issue. This is what I would call a massive oversupply problem