While on Future publishing, their website makes a strong pitch to lure consumers away from the retail channel. It is one thing for them to promote their online subscription service and another entirely to discredit their retail partners. I have reproduced part of their pitch here.
Newsagents operate with slim margins with a fixed cover price and with a supply model which does not reward entrepreneurship. If Future was smart, they would look at the magazine supply model and create a more businesslike relationship with retailers around driving sales. This would certainly be better than whacking them as they do at their website.
I’ve never really liked having a magazine subscribtion, I personally feel like that when I’ve paid for it I know the whole years worth of knowledge – which actually turns me off the magazine. It might be just me though.
I’d love waiting (patiently though) for when the magazine is in, before I owned my agency I would go into my local newsagents and see if it was in, browse, probably buy another one to tie me over and have an overall good experience.
A subscription doesn’t give you that. I still see a future for us even if every magazine on our shelves is online. Monographs and Journals have gone like that with varying degrees of success and failure.