Australian Newsagency Blog

In October 2008 we received John Tickell’s book from a magazine distributor. We supported it and it failed. It should have never been distributed using the magazine distribution model. Earleir this week, we received stock as part of our book sale. This time around, it has a more appropriate price ($3.95) […]

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Newsagents on the Gold Coast may need to be ready for tears this weekend with another publisher offer.  This time, Gold Coast Titans tattoos are available on presentation of a coupon in Weekend Bulletin.  The article (click on the image for a larger copy) says that tattoos are available with every copy sold in newsagencies.  […]

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Universal Magazines is using the goodwill (or apathy) of newsagents with the launch of a new title (for us at least) yesterday. Classic Kitchens arrived in-store and required re-jig of space allocation to make way for this new title. Like other Universal Magazine titles, we received too many copies and are expected to […]

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People’s Friend did not arrive on Friday (again!) so we pinched twenty copies from one of our other stores. This did not even fill putaway requests. Gotch tells us that we will have our stock on Monday. In the meantime we placed the Susan Boyle book where we usually put People’s Friend. […]

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Whenever I criticise magazines bagged with old issues here I am usually contacted by a publisher or two who say that these bagged issues sell well.  I have been tracking this for a few months now and see no evidence of this.  Take the issue of Auto Salon which went off sale yesterday.  It was […]

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Gotch has increased our supply of the US version of Prevention magazine from three copies to five even though we donl;t sell our of the three we receive.  This is frustrating because we really want to focus on growing sales of the Australian edition of Prevention magazine.  This is far more important to us that […]

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In two of my stores this morning we received bulks of My Weekly labelled as People’s Friend magazine.  In each case, People’s Friend is in out top five weekly titles.  This screw up will leave many unhappy customers.  It will also make us look bad, again.  I say again because there have been regular People’s […]

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Newsagents reading the inside back cover of Speedway Racing News this morning where shocked to see the publisher actively promoting against the newsagency channel.  Click on the image for a larger version of the page.  Subscribe & Save is the headline.  It then pitches: Have your copy home delivered and received SRN 3 days earlier […]

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Students are a valuable labour force for newsagents.  Newsagencies have been a valuable learning and income opportunity for students. The Fair Work Act is changing that thanks to the minimum hours provisions.
Consider the case of “Nick”.  For three years he has worked three nights a week, after school, for between and hour and a half […]

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The Australian is reporting this morning that radio stations want the federal government to give them a handout as was announced recently for the TV networks.
We hear so often, from politicians of all persuasions, that small business is the backbone of this country yet we rarely receive government largess on the scale of the $240 […]

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I was shocked to hear that the federal government has agreed to give the TV networks $240 million over two years as compensation for increased competition and the impact of the global financial crisis.
What nonsense!
The federal government itself is increasing competition against me.  Newsagencies are impacted by competition.  We are also impacted by deregulation.  Oh, […]

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We are promoting Woman’s Day at the front of our shop this week, adjacent to our Valentine’s Day gift display.  The free cookbook with Woman’s Day offers recipes for love so the placement near our Valentine’s Day offer makes sense to us.  The display will remain up for a few days.  Read on…  I am […]

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We received Parties for Kids from NDD a couple of days ago. It’s dated, on the cover, Autumn 2006. Seriously!
Judging by the noticeable discoloration on the cover (click on the image to see the detail of this), I’d say this is stock from the back of a warehouse somewhere which someone decided […]

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Some publishers just don’t get it.  Promoting a triple pack is more important than promoting the title itself.  Maybe they think this is what gets people picking up titles in-store.  They should ask customers what they think about these packs.  I see them as lazy marketing.

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I received a letter a week ago offering Reflex delivered to my office free for $4.89 a ream.  No newsagent can compete with that price since we don’t have the buying power of a federal government protected monopoly behind us.  We also can’t compete on brand recognition.  Australia Post has great brand recognition because of […]

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We received Beat the Bushfire Enemy with Knowledge book from NDD this morning.  It’s $22.95 with a four month on sale.  Ridiculous!  It’s an odd size (A5), out of season, has a long on-sale and is priced outside reasonable for most newsagency circulation product.  We have already given our free booklets on bushfire readiness.  Newsagencies […]

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We see to have delivery problems with People’s Friend in any one of my newsagencies every second week.  Yesterday, it was Forest Hill’s turn.  This would not matter if the title was not so popular but with 20 putaways and only a couple off copies left for the shelves we will have between 30 and […]

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Auto Salon magazine is fat this month thanks to the two old (but free) back issues the publisher has bagged with the title.  The thickness of the Auto Salon package means that we cannot place in its usual location.  We had to bump a more popular title from their flat-stack location.  The publisher ought to […]

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I thought I’d update how the Herald Sun Australia Day hat promotion panned out for us in our four shopping centre based newsagencies - two I own and two in which I have a 50% share.
In one newsagency we received around 30% more hats than Herald Sun newspapers.  This worked well for us.  We ran […]

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Newsagents may want to check their supply quantities for The Source this week.  In one of my stores our supply increased more than 100% on the back of sales data which suggested that no such increase was warranted.  Maybe it’s the Snoop cover but I doubt it.  While there will be an excuse, those making […]

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We received four copies of the last issue of Gameinformer magazine.  Yesterday, we received twenty-four copies of the latest issue.  A 600% increase in supply is extraordinary even though we did sell out of the last issue.  It is easy for magazine distributors to be bullish about a title for it’s not their money, time […]

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Network Services sent us 20 copies of Weight Watchers Cook Easy. It has a return date of 2016. We don’t have space for another cookbook so will have to take space from the ACP cookbooks.
To give the title a kick we are using a spare ACP stand for the next few days to […]

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The free travel bag which comes with the latest issue of Vogue, on-sale today, is a challenge to display.  It will not work in regular magazine fixturing so we are displaying it in a feature space.  To me, Vogue is a destination purchase.  I have no evidence to support this, it’s just a hunch.  The […]

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At around 5:30am yesterday someone tried to kick in the front door and a side window of one of my shops.  The police have video evidence from centre management as well as from our own security system.
While they were not successful, the damage and resulting disruption is considerable.  There is a very large glass window […]

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There is a phishing email doing the rounds purporting to be from Western Union.  Some newsagents received this yesterday:
Dear Valued Customer,
This is an official notification from Western Union. Your account access has been limited due to a login attempt failure.
To restore your account we have attached a form to this email. Please download the form […]

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