The roll out of the Roald Dahl promotion by News Corp. is not being done with any consistency nor, for the most part, conviction by the the company. As I mentioned last week, newsagency software companies have been left in the dark yet they are the first point of contact for help setting the promotion up in software.
I am writing about it today because of contact from a newsagent who has spoken to people inside News. Their view is this promotion has little support in several states.
Given the offensively small margin newsagents make and the lack of evidence of any valuable impact on newspaper purchases, I know of plenty of newsagents who would be happy if this is the last such promotion.
This is what I have been telling my rep for years! Newsagents would actively promote this if we were paid accordingly. The days of rolling over for the big publishers have ended. Why would you use premium space promoting something that may gross you $30-40 a day if you sell 100 books, how many newsagents would sell 100 a day?!
The News Ltd promotions are an insult, we all know they are a money maker for News and only News. They may see an uplift in support if they engaged with the channel and actually listened and acted on what we need to facilitate these promotions.
This does not take into account the other negative effects on the industry – newsagents who sell books on any day to anyone – coupon or no coupon newsagents etc etc. I have at least 4-5 customers get upset because I am not doing the promotion like xyz newsagent down the road who lets me get any book whenever I want!
Chris, you are correct – these promotions are an insult and suck up our valuable time for no return.
I am one of those newsagents who will sell any customer any number of any books (in this case) irrespective of whether or not they have a coupon. Why not sell as many as you can in one go?. You get all the sales and you only have to deal with the stock once.
As soon as you start handling it multiple times it is costing you money to do. This is not the newsagents fault, it is News’ fault. In order to get any form of return we need to handle as few times as possible.
If however, we were remunerated fairly then that is a different discussion.
When Newscorp sold WA’s Sunday Time to 7west last year I thought I’d seen the last of these pain in the ass promotions, however 6 boxes of Roald Dahl books still turned up.
Obviously part of the (commercial in confidence) agreement for the sale involved newsagents continuing to be inconvenienced for Newscorps commercial gain.
While I understand newsagents are considered too low on the food chain for Major publishers to include in their negotiations it would be nice (and a sign they understand we are not mealy here to serve their interests) if they could actually be bothered to inform us of what they have decided on our behalf.