News Corp and Fairfax both want newsagents in replace current newspaper display units with a new $3,500 unit. While the new unit will lift the standard in some stores, in others it will change something which is not broken. Instead of asking newsagents to spend $3,500 I’d recommend they ask newsagents to spend $200 on a small TV/DVD to be placed directly above the newspaper stand. We’ve done this with the Symply Too Good cookbooks and the sales results are wonderful.
The TV/DVD cost us $198 and Annette Sym has kindly provided a looping DVD promoting her books. From day one sales are up.
I appreciate that newspapers getting news related content to thousands of newsagencies could be problematic. Instead, I’d suggest a series of DVDs featuring columnists, the writers unique to the newspaper. Each ‘film’ could run for, say, 3 minutes. Give browsers a flavor of the columnist, their interests and have them talk about a relevant topic they write about. This builds a connect between columnist, newspaper and consumer. I am certain it would drive sales. It supports content only available in that newspaper and hopefully not available online. A new DVD every month with four or five items on it is all we would need. The investment would be small and the incremental sales worth it.
Publishers need to invest in a quality retail distribution channel if they want to drive sales. This pursuit of convenience purchases may generate a small kick in sales but the gain is not worth the cost of disrespect it shows to the existing specialists.
Our small experiment with the $168 TV/DVD player and the Annette Sym cookbooks shows that at least a trial is warranted.