People will travel for specialty magazines, as we can see in the US where the range of magazines I found in this Barnes & Noble is common in that group.
I have been thinking about this for a while and wondering what it would look like in Australia with a few newsagencies with a bigger range. And, by a few, I mean maybe only 2 or 3 in a capital city.
I don’t care so much about the weeklies or high volume monthlies – the supermarkets cover them. I am thinking about the titles outside of, say, the top 50 sellers, as outside of that there are many hundreds of titles people wold travel for. I see this today in the newsagency I have that offers the range. It does much better than the shops with a couple of hundred titles.
Anyway, here’s what I saw at Barnes & Noble, front of store, in the front window, attracting plenty of late night shoppers.
And, for those tempted to comment about margin and control: yes, we deserve much more than 25%, and we should have complete control over what we carry. In many situations, this second point wold increase sales.