Do the math with me. 10 copies of UFOlogist magazine. Cover price $7.95. My buy price $5.96. On-sale period – three months. My real-estate and labour costs per pocket per month are close to $4.00 meaning that I need to sell two copies a month to break even. I am luck to sell two copies in three months. UFOlogist does not work for my newsagency on these numbers. Indeed, I suspect it does not work for the vast majorities of newsagencies receiving the title. A fairer arrangement would be billing based on sales – the distributor has our sales data and could easily handle this. Alternatively an agreed performance threshold of a 50% sell-through under which I am paid regardless.
These are the matters on which magazine distributors agree in their discussions with the Magazine Publishers of Australia in determining KPIs for magazines. In the meantime we will fight title by title for fair treatment including fair scale out based on sales data and not the cash requirements of the distributor.