I have been speaking with the publisher of Spearfishing Downunder magazine and their decision to offer DVDs only to subscribers from the next issue. They wanted to get more accountable value from their investment in the DVDs but had not thought through the reaction from newsagents to such a valuable subs only offer.
Now before newsagents react, this is a niche publisher with a track record for supporting newsagents. Check out their website and how they guide people interested in the magazine to our businesses – not many publishers invest in driving newsagency traffic in this practical and valuable way.
Like so many other small and independent magazine publishers I speak with, they want to get their title into newsagencies where it will sell out. They make most of their money from sales. So, sales are vital and oversupply is expensive. Their DVD move was borne out of frustration with the magazine distribution model, frustration I understand.
I started my conversation with them yesterday following up a situation where one newsagent had been sent 32 copies of the latest issue (#36) of the Spearfishing Downunder magazine. They were down to receive two copies but somehow the Gotch magazine distribution process landed 32 copies in-store. The newsagent and the publisher suffer as a result of this distribution error.
I mention all of this to share with newsagents how magazine distribution errors and problems can impact the publisher as much as the newsagent. I know that this publisher, and other small and independent publishers, are keen to explore with newsagents ways of more certain sales over the newsagency counter. I have some thoughts on that which I am exploring.
In the meantime, I hope that this post opens for discussion here how we can work with publishers like this to drive sales and address challenges of the magazine distribution model.
In the meantime, I am sure that the publisher is looking at how to work more closely with newsagents.
It seems this publications has just changed hands as i had the correct supply with IPS for the previous edition and now i have recievd a 200% increase in supply for no reason. Distrobutors need to look at data before dumping stock! I am left with no choice but to early retrun them wasting my time and money and the publishers.
We also like Tim had a large increase, which are being returned and we are 350km from the ocean
It’s possible there was a glitch at the Gotch end based on what I am hearing. certainly not at the publisher end.
We are talking massive over supply in some cases so my question is where has all this extra stock come from if there is a glitch in there system some one must have over printed as well , it makes no sence .
I see that Dog news has also changed from IPS to GG , what is going on , maybe letting newsagents set there own supplies is not working out and in reality they do need to go down the gotch path .
Hi All,
I am the owner of this publication and have been for he last seven years. Yes, there were some conversion issue in the data from the previous distributor to the current one. The names were correct BUT the ID numbers were not. The allocations team used the ID and didn’t look at the actual names of the agents.
I sincerely apologise to those that have taken oversupply (and under in some cases). I have been told that everything possible is being done to rectify the issue. Please contact Gordon and Gotch as they are aware of the problem and will take additional copies so that they can be redistributed correctly. Again I apologise. As a small publisher we work incredibly hard on trying to streamline distribution so that wastage is minimised. Good for us and good for newsagents. I am reassured that it will be correct next issue.
In response to the subscription giveaway. It is a long story but the abridge version is; we punted on the inclusion of the DVD increasing sales through the newsagents. As you can appreciate it is rather expensive to produce. The sales increase we were hoping for didn’t eventuate HOWEVER retropectively it has become obvious that it was a distribution issue rather than a function of the product. We’d given an undertaking to our readers that we’d continue the DVD, but couldn’t afford to keep producing thousands of copies, so we gave our readers an option that we’d continue the DVD for subscribers. Mark explained how that looks if you are a newsagent.
We are hoping that G&G will resolve the distribution issue we have had in the past….time will tell. If the sales justify it we’ll return to having the DVD on the Newsagent copies as well – it has been frustrating!
As Mark mentioned we endeavour to ensure that people can find your newsagency if you sell our magazine through our interactive GeoBatch map AND a postcode search – both of these facilities have been used thousands of times. See website. We upload the distribution data to our website and update the interactive map each issue…which reminds me!