Fisherman & Boatowner bites the hand
Peter Webster, the Editor of Fisherman & Boatowner in the latest issue asks readers to switch from a retail purchase to a subscription. His pitch is rather clumsy, saying the retail price of the mag in the newsagents in about to start climbing, big time. Nothing like taking a stick to your customers.
Walker then makes a reasonable pitch about wastage, saying in part: When you subscribe, we only need to print just one magazine to make the sale…
In the next paragraph of his pitch for subscriptions, Walker takes a swipe at newsagents. When you buy it through the newsagents, the ratio can be as high at 4:1 in some places ie, print four, sell one, shred thre, lose our shirt. Every month. If the sell through rate is 25% as he claims, Webster ought to talk with NDD, his distribution partner for it is NDD which sets scale out to newsagents and NDD which has the most control over the long-term sell through rate.
Walker and his publisher can set rules for NDD and this should have been where he started. Take my newsagency – I receive 3 copies of Fisherman & Boatowner a month. I sell 1 copy most months, occasionally 2. On these numbers, I lose $1.50 carrying this title each month. I am effectively paying Walker and his partners in the magazine to showcase their title among better selling fishing and boating magazines. I am providing cheap advertising, billboard space, for his masthead.
I suspect that newsagents who read the statement by Walker will contact NDD and ask that they are no longer sent this magazine. Sales of the title, including subscriptions, will fall thanks to less billboard space in newsagencies like mine – all because Walker did not use the resources available to him to fix the magazine supply model for his title.
Niche magazines face a tough battle to survive and while the newsagent retail model has challenges for publishers, careful use of sales data and a smart management by the distributor ought to ensure a good return for the publishers and for newsagents. This is what newsagents want too – better sell through rates. Rather than over-servicing a niche area, newsagents would prefer to sell more of fewer titles. This saves on labour and saves on real-estate.
Newsagents who wish to email Walker can do so by clicking here.