161 newsagents have participated in my survey on magazine supply. The results are an insight to publisher and distributor behaviour and how newsagents respond.

Click here to see the survey results in full.

While newsagents, magazine publishers and magazine distributors should read the results, I urge publishers especially to read the results. Here are the headlines:

• 93.8% of newsagents said they received more magazines than they had space to display. 29.8% said they received more than 50 magazine titles a month they had no space to display.
• 79.5% of newsagents early return magazines regularly. What a waste of time and freight costs.
• 86.3% of newsagents say they think they could increase magazine sales if they could control their magazine supply.
• Dealing with magazine supply (29.8%) and the magazine distributors on accounts matters (13%) causes the most stress for newsagents.

This is an important survey as it gets to the heart of magazine distribution challenges for all three stakeholders.

For newsagents it reinforces the labour and financial wastage in a distribution model that disadvantages newsagents compared to other magazine retailers.

For publishers it underscores why titles they send may be treated in a way they are unhappy with. It also demonstrates that the business rules around supply are missing some key factors.

For distributors it provides evidence that they are running a broken system. You cannot keep loading a conveyor belt when it it already at capacity. The conveyor belt will break.

What do I wish would happen? I wish distributors would trial a new magazine supply model with a group of, say, 200 newsagents. I wish this group would be selected based on a robust application process and that the participating newsagents have complete and absolute control over the magazine titles and quantities of titles they receive.

139 newsagents out of 161 have said they think they could increase magazine sales if the above processes were put in place.  It sounds too good to be true.  But certainly worth a trial. What if it works? What if these newsagents in such a trial do increase magazine sales? The question would then be what’s next?

The magazine distribution model is paternalistic. Newsagents do not have control over commercial levers. Newsagents are not given reasonable opportunity to be business-like. This results in a lower standard of responses from newsagents – such as ill-informed early returns of which I write here regularly.

The purpose of the survey, publishing the full results and writing this blog post is to encourage genuine change for the good of newsagents, magazine publishers and, yes, magazine distributors.

We need to move on from the denial by distributors about over supply. We also need to move beyond the finger pointing where publishers blame distributors and distributors blame publishers and where both blame newsagents.

We need to engage in serious dialogue about fixing this. If fear that if we do not, more newsagents will cut magazine display space (27.3% have already according to the survey) and more will undertake ill-informed early returns and publishers will seek other routes to market.

Getting a group of newsagents together who do want to actively work with publishers and distributors on a more equitable model is the easy part. My question for publishers and distributors is – will you join with us on this, will you work with newsagents to create a magazine distribution model which respects newsagents and pursues everything necessary to help all stakeholders make more from magazines?

This is our moment of truth. If we all believe in magazines (publishers believe in their product, distributors believing in their business model and newsagents believing in the importance of the category as a traffic generator) then we must act. The current situation is not working by any measure. Do we have the guts and faith in our respective businesses to engage in genuine partnership on this? I hope so.

My proposal is risk free and loaded with valuable upside. I would jump at the opportunity to engage through my own newsagencies.