Ralph magazine closed in June. I thought that was the end of it. This morning we received Girls of Ralph. My hunch is that it will not sell – partly because they are leveraging a title which shoppers were not supporting and partly because we are saturated with girls of repurposed content. I hope that I am wrong and that I do make money out of this new title – I’m not holding my breath.
This title is a perfect example of why we need publishers to take on more of the risk of distributing titles to us. If did not achieve at least a 50% sell through, we should be paid for space and labour. An alternative model is that we pay based on scanned based sales – that is, after we have made a sale. There are other alternatives too where publishers take on a fairer responsibility for the stock they send us.
This is pathetic. I was glad to get rid of a poorly selling magazine. Now its ghost is haunting my shelves.