Look at these two magazines. There is not much different between them. Just about the same title. certainly chasing the same market. We see this every day in newsagencies. Locally published magazines chasing the same marketplace. We carry the cost of this because we make accessing our real-estate each and cheap. It’s frustrating – as it must be for the publishers who probably think they deserve to have space in our shops.
The problem is that the channel does not work that way. Any title can get out is the publisher pays distribution fees. This hurts us, puts some poor product out and confuses consumers and, in the long run, the magazine category suffers.
We need to find a way to control access to the newsagency channel.
On a related subject , I received today copies of plastic packaged bundle containing an old issue of Houses and the recently recalled issue of Houses:Kitchens+Bathrm which did not do well at all while on-sale.
what’s annoying and this is not the the first time with Houses, the price change constantly with each issue but they use the same barcode and both remain on-sale at the same time.
Now with today’s packaged supply, again the same barcode at $9.95 while current issue sells for $11.95.
So executive decision to return these packaged ones as I doubt they will sell. I only have this pool of loyal Houses’s readers and they would already have the old issue anyway.
This seems to happen a lot more than it should.
Which reminds me – Is Gotch’s Summer Shape-up which arrived this week, the same as last years, which came this time last year, and again a few months later?