The People magazine yearbook has an expected shelf life of four months. It has a cover price of $17.95 and a potential margin for me of $4.48. I need to sell at least a copy a month just to pay for the real-estate it occupies. I still have the stock I received a week ago. If I don’t sell any by early April I will return the stock. The cost of the space and the risk of theft is too great.
I’d expect that People is sold into Australia by the US publisher on a firm sale basis. I can’t see local sales being counted for their US audit. If I am right then why can’t we purchase it firm sale and for a considerably better margin? The high price, too, ought to drive a better margin – because of the higher risk of theft. The current numbers don’t work.
The current situation which gives us little or no control over a title like this accessing our valuable network is unfair to newsagents.
The magazine distributors groan when they read a blog post like this but they soon forget about it because they know that newsagents do not have the guts to fix this problem.