Author: Mark Fletcher

We are not making any money from the various Simpsons comic products.  There are too many copies of too many titles.  We are not even covering the cost of the retail space. Despite providing accurate sales data showing the sub 40% sell through rate for the various Simpsons titles, we continue to be grossly oversupplied – as I suspect are most other newsagents.  I am writing to Gordon and Gotch to advise that I will no longer carry this brand.  Since they cannot deliver fair allocation, there is no point in me continue to waste time and money on this. The constant shuffling of space, processing of returns and trying to resolve the oversupply issue is just not worth it.

Distribution issues aside, magazines remain an important part of any newsagency business.  We are promoting them to our Christmas shoppers with this coupon on all receipts.

I created our Magazine Club Card in August 2004.  It is an important and valuable point of difference for us over the supermarkets and other retailers selling magazines nearby.

We have found the coupon on receipts to be an effective way to communicate this point of difference to customers buying greeting cards and other items.  We use the same coupon approach to promote non magazine opportunities to magazine customers.

We stopped receiving The Economist in January, almost twelve months ago. We never sold any copies and were finally successful in stopping this title.  This morning, we received the Economist from Network once again.  There is no sales history whatsoever to support the reintroduction of the title to our newsagency.  The only reason I can see is that it helps Network reach its revenue budget based on how full the trucks are.

I am not alone.  This sort of thing happens every magazine delivery day to newsagents around the country.

Network is the first company to aggressively pursue newsagents for payment of accounts yet refuses to accept any accountability for the supply of titles without justification.  They create the accounts problem yet accept no responsibility.

The distribution for the third time of the one shot title, Wellbeing Beauty, on Friday to many newsagents has caused a stir.  Many who contacted me did not realise it was the third go around for this under-performing title until they read my blog post.

As I have said to those who have called me, what are you going to do about it? Complaining may provide some satisfaction, it does not move you forward on fixing the problem.

Newsagency associations are somewhat neutered on this issue as they want and need funding from publishers and distributors for awards, conferences and the like.

This matter of reissue of a poorly performing title and requesting, again, full copy return ought to receive urgent attention from associations in addition to individual newsagents.  It is a test case.

One newsagent said they would pose the question I posed in another blog post about whether newsagents are obligated to return full copies of titles to their solicitor. I think this does need legal investigation.  My understanding is that there is no contractual obligation.  But I am not a lawyer and am not in a position to provide legal advice.

With returns costing between 1% and 2% of magazine sales we need to take action.  It is too easy for publishers like Universal to send out a twice failed title with little risk – instead, expecting newsagents to carry the risk of theft, retail space, labour and return freight for them.

Newsagents not acting in the past is what enables Universal and others to continue their behaviour.

So, what are you going to do about this?