Author: Mark Fletcher

Good to see Burke’s Backyard back and getting star treatment now that the show is coming back to TV. While sales have been okay while it’s been off air, ther magazine will benefit from on air support. We’ve been given extra stock this month because of the sales kick expected with the product giveaway accompanying the title.

Garden and related titles are strong despite the drought and stronger interest in Burke’s Backyard ought to help the overall category.

Limelight, Life Etc, Collectors and Gardening Australia from the ABC are strong magazine titles in their respective niches and therein lies a dilemma for the retailer. We’re driven to display each title in its appropriate category yet I suspect they would equally work in an ABC themed display stand. Such a display might see multiple titles purchased if, as I suspect, the titles are purchased sometimes for their ABC connection than the pure subject matter.

Take Collectors for example – it should be located at the back of the shop in the collectibles / antiques area. However, the TV show on which it is based is interesting to a broader audience that such an isolated category – yet I cannot justify display space for the limited quantity of this one title.

We might have a crack next week at an ABC themed display grouping the some of their titles together and therefore help the newer titles like Collectors find an audience.

The news that Emap is contemplating selling Australian titles needs to be considered in the context of the turmoil for the company in the UK. Add to this the moves surrounding some of Time Inc’s Australian titles and newsagents seem set for some changes in the magazine space – but rather than reacting to these moves, business minded newsagents ought to exert more control for themselves.

Australian Horticulture is struggling. We sell, if we’re lucky, one copy a month. It’s not paying its way. The Rural Press website says the titles has 4,507 ABC audited paid circulation January to June 2004. I received three copies this month so it cannot be in that many newsagencies once you account for subscriptions.

This is the type of publication I’m talking about when I pitch here that newsagents need more equitable terms. I can’t keep losing money of Australian Horticulture. I don’t need the title to give my newsagency credibility as a magazine specialist. I’d gladly carry the title if I was being paid for real-estate and time but without such compensation, the title is not worth it.

Australian Horticulture has a lifeline in the form of newsagents providing the retail presence at no cost. As one who is paying for this subsidy I feel it is right to question the worth of the title.

In retail, the saying stack em high and watch em fly is often pitched as a good strategy. There is evidence that this works with magazines. An issue can sell very well until you have one or two left and they will sit until the recall date. I have seen this happen where an issue has sold all but one or tow copies on the day of issue.

There are plenty of magazines titles for which we receive just one copy. Romantic Homes and Victorian Homes – the two in the middle of the photo – are single copy titles for my shop. It’s a problem because the pocket costs me the same whether it holds one copy or eight copies. Customer behaviour is such that these single copy titles are not likely to sell.

The distributor scale out algorithms are such that I am likely to be supplied for months, possibly years, before the title is cut.

So what’s the solution? My view is that if I am due to get a single copy then don’t send me any. However, I accept that such an approach denies the title the opportunity of building a customer base. Maybe I have to be flexible. The answer might be a scaled commission. If I am to receive one or two of a title, my commission ought to be, say, double. This gets my attention and demonstrates that the publisher is keen to work with me as I find customers for their title.

It could be that sending more titles is a solution. A smart distributor would cut in some areas so the title can be better supported elsewhere. While they say they do this, I am doubtful. A trial project built around a few titles could be established to test various approaches and find one which equitably serves publishers newsagents and distributors.

The current approach of all newsagents receiving titles in single quantity is disrespectful and financially expensive for newsagents.

This Excel magazine is a dog, it should not have access to the newsagent retail network. Sales data, not supply and return data but sales data will support my claim that this title ought to be killed off.

The only people making money off this title are NDD, the distributor, and the publisher. For the publisher it’s a low cost venture – same old content regurgitated and a black and white print run. For NDD it’s a fee for service. Newsagents are being abused, again.

I’ve early returned the copies I received today as I have more appropriate product to display in its place.

The free pedometer with this week’s New Idea is working well as the above sales decay graph for my store shows – it’s comparing this week with the average of the last three weeks. We’ve been a construction zone since March so sales are down. It’s good to see the kick this week.

We look at sales decay data for all the major weeklies every few days to measure the success or otherwise of our magazine co-location efforts. It also helps, as is the case here, with tracking the impact of publisher driven promotions.

As far as magazine giveaways go, this pedometer is excellent – useful and timely.

I’m thinking of getting out of adult magazines. Not because of an issue with selling what some might call pornography – each to his/her own I say. No, my concern is that adult magazines like Penthouse, Playboy and Hustler are no longer paying their way.

Take Penthouse for example, sales of Penthouse in my newsagency are poor – the sell through rate is 30% at best for the last year. Given the cover price, at this rate I’m not making money. If I get out of Penthouse then the others probably go as well. I’d keep Picture and People but not the others.

My view is that I need to get out of titles when they are no longer viable rather than waiting for a publisher to decide this.

The AWW branded crossword book launched last week (see this blog post) seems to sell well. In my store, in six days, we have already achieved a sell through of 30%. I’d say this is because of co-location.

The magazine industry’s spin doctors were working hard late last week, trying to find some good news in the Roy Morgan research readership figures for the last 12 months to March 31.

In most cases they failed. The Morgan numbers contained few bright spots for most consumer magazine publishers, prompting the usual dark mutterings about flaws in the Morgan system.

Page 21, Australian Financial Review, May 21. All the magazine industry was doing was singing from the same hymn book the newspaper industry has used for the last few years.

The value of the Australian newsagency channel is clear when you read this piece by Bill Moyers about the plight of small independent magazine publishers in the US in the face of a rate hike from the US Postal Service – most independent small magazines are distributed direct to subscribers in the US by post.

While in the US the publishers face the problem alone – given almost no retail footprint for independent titles – in Australia newsagents are part of the equation. We have actively supported independent titles for over 100 years but now that the major publishers are driving traffic to other magazine retailers, the cost of carrying independent titles is under the spotlight.

As Moyers points out, this is a social issue. Unfortunately, the social value of newsagencies is lost on the federal Government.

The Telegraph in the UK is reporting that Emap is planning to pull several titles from publication. Of interest to me is that two car titles are included – it’s a category under challenge. While I have no data to support the claim, I’d say browsing is down if anecdotal comments from newsagents is anything to go by.

Annette Sym’s cookbook series is an Australian independent publishing success story. The active approach by Annette and her husband in promoting her cookbook series through newsagencies is an excellent model for others to follow. Annette visited our newsagency a year and a half ago for a day of demonstrations. We reward that loyalty with regular displays in-store.

Symply Too Good To be True 5 has just been released and we’ve sold 20 copies in three weeks. That’s five times the sales of any other cookbook title in our newsagency. It says something about the strength of the Symply brand as well as their approach to marketing.

The approach of Annette and her husband speaks to the issues I often raise here about fringe independent titles. It is not enough for an independent title to be merely sent ton newsagents expecting it’s presence on the shelf to work. The key is promotion. Annette does in-store visits, provides a DVD to play on loop showing a recipe being made, provides posters and regularly updates her range. Compare this with other indy Australian titles – the vast majority offer nothing to support sales.

If independent Australian magazine publishers want to grow their sales in newsagencies they ought to look at what Annette Sym and her husband are doing – get involved, actively support your title, do more than send stock and a couple of posters. Actively partner with newsagents and they will respond.

Hello! sold out in our newsagency in under two days and the Queen on the cover is the reason. Once we saw the cover of the magazine we moved it next to our range of English magazines. We’ve done this previously but not with the success of this issue – moving titles based on their covers is, in our view, an important part of magazine retailing.

I’d be interested in worldwide sales for this issue as I suspect the Queen cover has proven to be very popular.