magazines

I like Alpha. It’s a quality magazine. Even though issue 4 is smaller it’s remains a good read and worth paying for. My frustration is the sales mechanic. Requiring a customer to opurchase the Herald Sun (in Melbourne) leads to frustrated customers. As noted here previously if I were in charge I’d make some changes:

Increase the cover price to $6.95 – the quality of the product supports such a price.

Include teaser articles some of the features in the News Ltd newspapers with a coupon at the bottom of the article encouraging an Alpha purchase for $2.00 off.

Offer a competition entry with purchase of the magazine and promote this on the coupon in the newspaper. Maybe a car giveaway each issue or a holiday or a hit out with a tennis star or a training run with a footy club.

Based on what I see cross the counter I am certain that these changes would boost sales of Alpha.

Women’s Weekly, like any high volume magazine, experiences rapid sales decay from the date of launch. Today was the second weekend of the current issue and we would usually sell 2 or 3 copies. The problem was we had too much stock. Se we called in a spruiker, put a table at the front of the shop and offered a giveaway cookbook if they purchased Women’s Weekly. We sold 85 copies in 2 hours. The BONUS for us is that each customer joined our magazine club card promotion and started on their way to saving more off the cost of magazines in the future.

This is the type of sales building campaign which only a newsagent could do. The customers coming into our shop as a result of this promotion today browsed other magazines and our newspapers. Half purchased other product. Newsagencies are specialist retail outlets for newspapers and magazines and if suppliers more closely and purposefully nurtured them incremental sales could be achieved.

Texterity is another company to watch in the digital magazine space. Reader’s Digest is a client of theirs. Check out their August issue online. That Texterity has Reader’s Digest IDG, Time Warner and Conde Nast as clients puts them in serious contention in the digital magazine stakes. With so many magazines now offering online editions it’s only a matter of time before they also offer the purchase of stories online – maybe some days after the whole title is on the market.

Particletree has published (online) the first issue of Treehouse an online magazine about web development. Treehouse is a typical niche publication except that they are pursuing readers where they live – online. It makes sense for them. Low production costs. High quality on screen presentation. Excellent representation of advertisements. All leads to a low subscription cost. The high quality content as reflected in this first issue will drive sales.

Treehouse is showing how niche can be done efficiently and effectively online. It’s something we will see more of and I am sure the result will be more space on retailer shelves for higher volume product.

Our Magazine Club Card promotion (buy 11 magazines over 8 weeks and your 12th magazine up to $10.00 is FREE) is today 13 months old. What was to be a three month campaign is showing no signed of slowing down the sales growth we are achieving.

Every day we are thrilled with customer reactions. They are buying magazines which they would otherwise not purchase. The free magazine is the luxury.

The graph (above) shows strong sales growth. With industry average year on year growth at around 4%, our growth is exceptional. The success lies squarely at our front line team. They pitch the offer well. Customers have a sense of saving right away.

While I moan here regularly about the challenges newsagents face and express frustration at what I see as marketing mistakes by some suppliers, in my store magazines are an important cornerstone to the growth we are achieving.

Our simple loyalty campaign demonstrates that customers appreciate real value, they like a simple offering and they want faster access to rewards. What we offer with our Magazine Club Card is better value than the FlyBys offering from Coles/Myer and better value than the fuel discounts offered by the Coles and Woolworths supermarkets.

This is a great small business success story. Our biggest challenges are the fluctuation in sales caused by the campaign and the resulting supply challenges so that we do not sell out and they are challenges I enjoy.

Our customers enjoy this campaign. Our employees enjoy it as well. I enjoy it because I am rewarding from within, building a category with depth exclsuively to me and in a way I control.

We sold out of the latest issue of Better Homes and Gardens in 2 days. This is a monthly title and usually sells out at the end of week three in our store. A two day sell out with usual supply is a record. Checking around I’ve found others having similar success. In part the success is due to our Magazine Cliub Card promotion. BHG is a title people treat themselves to and the promotion encourages such treating.

I’ve been looking at sales for The Australian Women’s Weekly for the last month. This is the first month of the revamped magazine. Sales are healthy for the stores I have seen. While sales in the first seven days were not as strong, sales over the next three weeks to yesterday (when the title came off sale) were above average.

Since the sample size is small, broad conclusions cannot be drawn. However, the result from my part of town seems to be good.

Girlfriend is a successful newsstand magazine in Australia. It’s website is even more successful. They are at the forefront of Internet use – readers get to have a say in the making of the magazine including article suggestions and choosing the front cover. At their u make the mag section of the website their constituents can connect with the staff of the magazine in a way which I’d suggest no other media outlet in Australia matches today. Girlfriend is an excellent model. My only criticism is that the office blog entries are too well written and too sanitised to be genuine blog entries.

Other publishers in Australia should be following the Girlfriend lead and connect with their constituents in an open ended online conversation.

Zinio Systems, Inc., has announced the launch today of the first global distribution channel for published digital media. Zinio currently offers access to digital magazines from nine countries from its global newsstand website.

Newsagents in Australia retail plenty of product from overseas and while Zinio does not currently offer the depth newsagents offer, one must expect the online product range to expand with time. A niche publisher will weigh the return of scale out to, say, 4,600 newsagents for sales of, say, 2,000 copies verses an online only supply chain. The online model may generate less sales in the short to medium term but it does not have the same distribution cost. Having said that and based on the most recently published sales data for digital magazines, consumer up take could be expected to quickly surpass newsstand sales in many titles.

I’d tag this move by Zinio as a tipping point in magazine distribution.

Newsagents on the one hand don’t want to carry titles which do not pay their way yet was to ‘own’ range in the magazine category. That Zinio global is operational opens a new and lean competitor to the newsagency channel in overseas titles. Take Business Week for example. At Zinio global I can subscribe for around US$27.97 a year. In my retail newsagency I sell Business Week (Asia edition) for $6.60 or $343.20 a year. It may not be the perfect comparison but it makes my point. As a Business Week reader I’d be happy to purchase the digital version. It’s better value. I can access the product where and when I want. There is consistency of supply.

Zinio’s announcement yesterday has altered the playing field. Magazine distributors and newsagents need to respond. It would be ignorant to dismiss the Zinio move as irrelevant at present. Hindsight will prove such a view wrong.

I applaud Zinio for their move. It makes sense to their business model and was always to be a key part of their expansion plan. As newsagents we need to educate ourselves about such moves and get about building our businesses with products and services over which we have more control.

Here are some quotes from the Zinio press release:

“Our global newsstands open new markets for publishers needing to appeal to consumers around the world,” said Jeff Bruce, president, publishing for Zinio. “Today, magazines are instantly available to global magazine consumers with the convenience of language and currency preference at domestic prices. These benefits and the immediacy of the digital format will boost subscriptions and revenues for publishers.”

“Zinio is the clear market leader in the U.S. and offers a compelling model for magazine publishers abroad,” said Paul Cheal, Publishing Director, IPC Country and Leisure Media. “The global network offers us the potential to target and convert new readers through Zinio’s international sales channel and delivery platform.”

The Zinio Global Newsstand Network offers about 400 magazines available through franchise partners in local markets, including Poland, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan, and Thailand. The network also features a UK newsstand with more than 40 magazines from fourteen publishers.

Madison, Notebook and Real Living and the three new magazine success stories from 2005 as far as I am concerned. Alpha just misses out based on my criteria. I’m looking for titles which grow the category, which are easy to sell and which deliver sustained sales. It is in this last KPI where Alpha fails in my book. But, hey, it’s only issue #2 so it may pick up from here. Refer my previous posting on Alpha.

Madison sales are strong and we’re several issues in. Issue 2 of Notebook has been out for two days and newsagents I speak with are already declaring it a winner. Real Living, while only at the end of issue 1, has outperformed in each location I have checked.

This all tells me that the magazine category is alive and well at the top end, where good in store promotional materials are provided and where the title is well supported with advertising.

At the bottom end things are ratty. Newsagents could lose 200 titles and their bottom line would improve. None of these titles are promoted other than by newsagents putting them on the shelves in the hope they will sell. The capital tied up in this dead stock is wasted when there are new titles to promote.