Author: Mark Fletcher

It’s in the long tail of magazines, the special (fringe) interest titles where we are seeing consistent growth. Magazines about railways, model railways, remote control, woodworking, airplanes, model planes, military history, family history and so on.

While the top selling titles account for volume, sales are more prone to fluctuation based on cover or other factors more often outside the control of the retailer.

In most of our range of special interest titles (see photo below) we are seeing consistent growth regardless of the cover. The growth is being achieved because of the broad range, good display and regular promotion elsewhere in the shop. No extra special effort, just good retailing.

I like special interest titles because they are a point of difference for newsagents. The volume is not there for the mass merchants, convenience stores and petrol outlets.

Our biggest challenge is displaying them cost effectively – with rent rising 5% a year and more we will need to fit more into less to maintain viability.

We’re promoting quilters magazines in the display next to our counter this week.

Even though most of the titles are in sealed bags, they still sell here. On Thursday a customer buying something else noticed a new title which had just come in. I didn’t know you carried this. Not only did we win the sale we won a new putaway customer.

The photo on the left does not do the display justice – especially the small poster we created.

Our decision to promote the diversity of our range here each week is Long Tail strategy at work. It would be too easy and somewhat senseless to promote only top selling titles here.

It will be good to see Ralph and FHM target different demographics now they are under the same roof. Both titles have been placed near Zoo and the adult titles. A less raunchy FHM will give us a new title to promote with or at least near mens fashion titles.

Thanks to the folks at Network Services, we have been provided some excellent collateral to enable us to promote the new Mindfood magazine. This is the type of material I was referring to when I first blogged about Mindfood.

Since this is a title which could work in several locations, we have decided to go hard at our Frankston newsagency and promote the title at our main newspaper display. Watching customers approach the display shows it’s working in that the title is noticed. Every so often someone picks up a copy. We also used the newspaper location because every other magazine feature space was taken with another title being pushed.

Promoting new titles from independent or small publishers is a challenge. For newsagents to draw attention to the title we need help. That’s where collateral like posters and cover run-one are essential.

We have developed a one page strategy for new titles, regardless of whether sufficient collateral material is provided. The strategy does considerably more than placing the title on the shelf where the publisher or distributor requests. it engages us as retailers in a number of ways to get the most from the title. It also has some KPIs which, if not passed, lead to a decision to remove the title.