Newsagents pay $6.78 for Australian 4WD Action. Subscribers can get the title delivered to their letterbox for $3 an issue. This is the pitch in a recent email campaign from Express Publications for this and some of their other titles.
The email opens with: Roothy believes our magazine subscribers should be rewarded for their loyalty. I wish that ‘Roothy’ would reward newsagents for their support and newsagency customers for their loyalty in purchasing issues regularly in newsagencies.
I understand that subscriptions play an important in the overall sales mix for a magazine. What I do not understand is the extraordinary price difference and the creation of first and second class readers.
Every day newsagents see regular shoppers purchasing the same titles. Indeed, many of us have putaway customers who are effectively subscribers. The Express Publications offer ignores our regular customers. It also ignores the tremendous work newsagents do to promote a title. Without this work, making our expensive retail space and specialist labour available, subscriptions would not be what they are.
subscribe to it . any rules to this ?
Notice more magazines are pitching subscription offers with the “get it days before it is available in newsagencies” Newsagents promote these titles and get in regular customers then some companies turn around and bash us!!
The issue here is returns. We think we’re on a good deal because of the sale or return arrangement. In fact you can see by the price differential between the cover price and the subscription price just how much the publishers are charging us to cover themselves for our returns. In this case I would estimate the correlation between the 2 price points almost exactly covers the cost of returns at a return rate of 40%.
There has got to be a better way for the newsagency channel to work with the magazine distributors but how do you get to a constructive starting point when there is so much animosity already souring the relationships.
Our representative organisation hasn’t made much headway – maybe it’s time for one of the marketing groups to pick up the baton.
What more would newsagents expect from this so called publisher/bagger of utter shit than to flog us a bit more with thier subsciption offers.How about we can thier mags and see how they go with sales on subscriptions.
@ b&g
i agree with you 1000%
Just another slap in the face for the newsagent.
Does anyone know if subscribers get the same pack as newsagents? I was told by a customer a few months ago that the reason she gave up subscribing to a particular magazine (not this one) because they never included a DVD series which was included in the newsagency edition. Even with bulk postage rates, I would have thought that the cost of mailing this magazine would not be cheap.
@KMc #1
The issue has nothing to do with the cost of returns. It’s very simple. Magazine subscriptions can be offered at a lower price because there’s no distributor’s fee and no newsagent’s commission to pay for the duration of the subscription. However, as ChrisW noted, magazine subscriptions do incur a substantial postage cost.
@KMc #2
Is there a better way for newsagency channel to work re magazines? There could well be. Have you tried communicating directly with individual publishers about your supply needs or problems? Two entities singing from the same song sheet might be something distributors cannot ignore.
General comment: the majority of magazine readers do not take out subscriptions so taking umbrage at magazine publishers’ subscription offers is a silly waste of time and effort. Far better to direct that energy towards presenting the most vibrant magazine area possible to encourage shoppers to buy, buy, buy!
MagLoverOz
@MagLoverOz:
Believe it or not many newsagents are passionate about magazines, and especially the sales of magazines. That we are so committed is well proven by our dedication of investment, resources, property and energy directly into the magazine business. At our shop, right now we are undertaking a very significant investment project to ensure our dedicated magazine area is dynamic, powerful and adaptable to an uncertain but changing future.
Your suggestion regarding direct contact with publishers is understood positively but would it remove the bizarre business behaviour of the distributors from the process ? We also need to consider the practical implications of one small business trying to manage the myriad of relationships that would need to be formed with so many publishers.
The only point I would disagree on is the issue of returns. Sure, distributor and retail margins form part of the price difference between subscription and retail price points, but it would be naive to suggest that returns are not a significant factor influencing the price discounts that can be offered to subscribers.
MARK, your comments on this subject are correct. If we Newsagents did not display these titles in-store for the consumer to see in the first place, there would be NO subsription purchased.
I have previously mentioned on this forum that the associations and ANF seem unable to negotiate on behalf of newsagents on such issues. I have also mentioned how an “alliance” of marketing groups such as newsXpress, Nextra, Newspower, Lucky Charm etc… COULD be established to negotiate deals direct with suppliers and bypassing distributors. It is clear margins of up to 85% are available from these publishers. Let’s work together as an industry and achieve such margins.
Kyle it is not the job of associations to negotiate such agreements. They have no commercial relationship or structure through which to deliver commercially for the publishers. I mean no criticism of the association on this.
I take them out ,time i think to start posting them back