The treatment of Australian newsagents by the publisher of Quadrant magazine is gaining more coverage. MediaWeek ran a piece Monday, Crikey ran a piece in their news yesterday and the Bangkok Bugle blog covered the issue yesterday. On top of this, many newsagents have told me they have written to the publisher and to Gordon and Gotch, the distributor, to request that the title be no longer supplied.
Newsagents provide low cost access to retail real-estate to a broad range of magazines. We tolerate publishers promoting subscriptions in their pages. What we ought not tolerate is publishers disrespecting the value we add through our retail network. This is what Quadrant has done.
Curiously, I had a customer ask me across the counter yesterday is we stocked Quadrant. I said no and explained why. He said wankers and took a couple of steps before turning and saying – them, not you. I stood at the counter wondering how many he will tell the Quadrant story to.