Author: Mark Fletcher

The 100th issue of Burke’s Backyard magazine has been a huge success. While most TV related titles die when the show is taken off the air, it says something about Don Burke’s profile that his magazine has lasted this long without the weekly airing of the show. We sold out of the 100th issue in a week.

NDD continues to demonstrate their skill at magazine distribution with the scale out of Kitchen Trends. This title has a low sell through and a shelf life of six months. It is loss making for us and, I suspect, many other newsagents.

If NDD were leading the way in magazine distribution, as they claim on their website, the quantity they send and the shelf life would be configured so as to be profitable.

Newsagents cannot afford this behaviour yet they are too time poor to follow up – a situation exploited by NDD in their model.

Scrapblog takes scrapbooking online with the added benefit of connecting you with a community of folk who do the same. Scrapbooking magazines are an important category in any newsagency.

The Internet is awash with non mainstream blogs and websites offering entertaining and alternative channels to the Woman’s Day, New Idea, Famous, NW and Who fix. Check out the offerings at The Superficial, Hot Momma Gossip, Perez Hilton, Handbag, MollyGood, Nicole Bitchy, Rope of Silicon, Hollywood Grind … there are plenty more. Just do a search under Google blogs and every gossip fetish will be satisfied.

My point is that gossip is hot online. It generates huge traffic. We (newsagents) rely on similar traffic in newsagencies with weekly magazine sales being the backbone of our magazine category. We ignore the online trend at our peril.

Jane and Damien have papered our entire display window with posters and put two small black ‘gates’ in front, guiding people to peer in and see a satellite navigation device lit up – it’s the prize on offer in a magazine promotion we are running.

With so many promotions visually noisy we decided to pare this one back and make the prize the star. Each magazine purchase results ina coupon for our customers. It’s stirred some good interest.

We were given the satellite navigation product by a supplier as a rebate for purchases.

Informed Investors magazine is the kind of title newsagents need to cultivate. It’s locally published and focused on a specific and loyal demographic – Asian investors. It’s is the only comprehensive Australian wealth and financial magazine published in the Chinese language.

I have been talking by email with Mike Wang, the publisher of Informed Investors. He contacted me through this blog, asking how to achieve better placement in newsagencies. Informed Investors needs to be placed next to Chinese newspapers. Newsagents who sell Chinese newspapers ought to talk to Wrapaway in NSW or Informed Investor direct in other states about getting the title. We currently offer over thirty foreign language titles in my newsagency and we’re a suburban business thirty minutes out of Melbourne.

What I like about Informed Investor is that it is niche focused and that it compliments a category which does well for us and many newsagencies.

It’s interesting to see how Mike and his team are promoting this title compared to, say, BRW. Both are in the same space yet go about their business quite differently. Informed Investor seems more closely connected with its readers, more practical if you will. That is not to be critical of BRW – the difference is one of style I guess.

Driving toward Caulfield Racecourse today I noticed a long line of cars, snaking back well over a kilometre. The car parks were almost full and the traffic was stopped. It turns out that they were headed to the racecourse for the Caravan Camping and Touring Supershow. I had no idea that caravans and camping were so popular. We sell caravan and camping magazines and sales are okay but not as good as the traffic jam suggested. It’s got me wondering what the disconnect is here because I want the people in the traffic jam coming to my shop to buy their magazines.

The traffic jam shows there is a market and I am sure these people want to connect with their interests outside of the show season. I can help with that through the magazines I have. Hmmm…

Meredith Corp in the US is closing the print edition of Child magazine and folding this into an online parenting-and-family portal that will also include content from American Baby, Family Circle and Parents. MediaPost has the rest of the story.

Maybe that’s what Pacific Magazines ought to have done with Explode – the teen boys magazine they closed after a few months publication. My blog entry from November 2005 remains one of the a frequently entry out of Google searches, meaning that plenty of people are looking for Explode – for a short lived brand it sure is popular. Check out the comments – I’ve received three times this privately from people enquiring about the title.

Following the example of Meredith and others of recent times, magazines no longer close, they go online and, most likely, find a more profitable existence.

I’m in Sydney again today and took another look at the new Watermark store. Their magazine fixturing is the same as I saw at the Relay at Adelaide airport except that this unit is supported by better lighting. This full-face display makes for easier browsing but restricts the number of titles you can display and would therefore not be helpful for newsagents who see their magazine range as a point of difference. The ideal is somewhere between what Watermark has and the traditional nine to twelve tier unit newsagents have.

I was in Perth yesterday and as is my wont I visited a bunch of convenience stores to see how they are managing magazines. I saw empty pockets for one or more weeklies which came out on Monday. Woman’s Day, New Idea and even TV Week.

With direct accounts, no one is actively managing the magazine category. One store manager, when I asked why he had empty pockets, angrily responded with “they don’t pay me enough”. Another store manager said he would prefer to deal with the newsagent because he could get more when he needed it.

While this is only anecdotal evidence, I’d suggest there is an opportunity for newsagents to mount a structured research campaign with a view to making a case to win back management of convenience store accounts. I have no doubt that this would result in fewer empty pockets, happier customers and broader support for the magazine category. We (newsagents and publishers) have to decide whether we are seriouys about sub agents.

The empty pockets I saw today are a disgrace.