Check out the date on the latest issue of Alpha magazine which has just hit the newsstands. It reads January 2009. Oops. It should read January 2010. While it won’t affect sales or sales data, there may be one or two questions. Click on the photo for a larger version.
The Kyoto range of diaries from Collins Debden is selling well in this week of the Copenhagen climate talks. We have them well displayed to connect with the extensive news coverage of the climate talks.
Given the carbon offset message on the cover, this range also connects with the Emissions Trading Scheme news which has dominated news here in Australia in recent weeks.
The Kyoto range is an excellent opportunity for newsagents to do something different with this range of diaries. By embracing the opportunity, we can drive extra business.
I often hear newsagents talking about deals – they want great deals, as if price is all that matters in the equation. Sometimes, the best ‘deals’ are sitting on the floors of our shops and waiting for us to see the opportunity and engage. The Kyoto diary range is one such opportunity. We have purchased the stock at a good price – not a brilliant price but a good price. Moving them faster creates the ‘deal’ many are chasing.
Treating the Kyoto range as any other diary right now is blocking access to better sales.
Editor & Publisher, the much respected and leading journal of the newspaper business in the US, is closing after 125 years. While the publication announced its death on its website, the editor, according to a report in Wired, frist announced the move via Twitter. Analysts say, in hundreds of reports already online, that Editor & Publisher is a victim of the decline of US newspapers.
While some of the challenges faced by US newspapers are different to our Australian situation, many are the same if somewhat delayed being experienced here.
Alan Mutter provides an indication to the implications fo the closure of E&P at his blog:
With the pending shutdown of the authoritative trade magazine and the reduction in the last few years in the number of securities analysts covering publishing, there will be scant independent reporting and commentary on the troubled industry at a time it most needs objective and honest feedback.
In four hours yesterday our online ad for staff for a new newsagency I am involved with generated 73 applications. What particularly interested me was that 17 of the applicants have current newsagency experience. This is a higher proprtion that I usually see. The pool includes some candidates with excellent resumes. We should find the team we are looking for.
Time has named Motorola’s Droid smartphone the #1 gadget in its Top 10 Gadgets of the Year. One feature which stands out for reviewers is the screen. It is crisp and easier for reading news and other content usually found in print.
Maria Rodale, Chairman and CEO of US publisher Rodale has penned an article for the Huffington Post on why magazines won’t die. Her thesis is summed up in this paragraph:
The Internet is a technology that enables people to go out in SEARCH of things. I’m all for that and love it to pieces. But sometimes, I just want things to FIND me. Sometimes, I am just tired of looking and typing and seeking, and I just want to sit on my comfortable couch and be surprised when I turn the page.
While I agree that consumers enjoy the surprise of magazines, some content does fare better from an online only platform.
Google has launched Living Stories, an experimental new feature designed to deliver news stories, updates, editorials, and multimedia focusing on specific topics – all on one single Web page. The launch has been done with the New York Times and the Washington Post. There is a buzz among news sites online. There is also some cynicism – check out Newsweek. I like the look of Living Stories. It’s an innovative way for showing how online news can be structured.
I don’t think Google is making this move to appease the newspaper industry. Google is making this move because it good for Google.
In keeping with a tradition of Christmases past, the creative team at Tower Systems has created a poster for promoting magazines as Christmas gifts. This is available free for all newsagents to use. Click here for an A4 version. Click here for an A3 version.
With more newsagents using Tower Systems newsagency software than the combined customer base of all other software companies, Tower is committed to helping newsagents cultivate healthier and more enjoyable businesses. The Christmas poster and other free collateral is a resource any newsagent is welcome to use.
Disclosure: I am the owner of Tower Systems.
Yesterday, three days after the Olivia Newton John Christmas CD was given away with the Sunday Herald Sun, we continued to experience retail rage from customers who came in expecting we would have a CD available for them.
I have been getting my newspaper home delivered for 18 years one customer spat at our retail team in a tone which accused them of personally letting them down.
The CD was a huge success yet it was a failure too by giving customers a reason to be rude and offensive.
The intensity of retail rage, in my experience, is the inverse of the value of the product or service being raged about.
We are promoting Better Homes and Gardens in the mall at the front of our newsagency. This is a pretty basic display – nothing visually fancy. We figured that the magazine speaks for itself.
We also have a full waterfall display in the usual location as well as two pockets in with our women’s weeklies titles. Better Homes and Gardens performs well with co-location. We will leave it at the front of the shop for a week but co-located in-store for the full on-sale period or for as long as we have stock.
We are promoting Dolly magazine and the free Dangerfield headphones next to our counter at the end of the women’s magazine aisle. We planned to display them at the counter but the packaging was a challenge for the limited space available. I think Dolly will work well in the alternative location we have selected. At least here we can display the package in the display units provided by ACP. We also have stock in the usual location for Dolly – among teen magazines and out of the display unit.
We will leave the display in the photo in place for a week.
I heard from another newsagent last week complaining about losing magazine sales because of a Coles deal which discounted a small group of popular titles by around 30%. In the story recounted to me, the newsagent was confronted by a customer asking for a refund for magazines purchased from them a few minutes earlier. Who can blame the customer for the question if it saves them $3.00?
A newsagent caring about their regular customers will find it hard to refuse such a refund request from a regular. They will be left wondering if they have to offer similar discount bundles to match the offer from Coles.
Several years ago, we got caught up in the pre Christmas discounting of calendars. We started in response to another retailer in the centre. We soon realised that we were discounting sales we would get regardless of the price since we offered a point of difference around brand, range and service. It took two years of hard work to win back higher margin business. All we had done with the discounting was to train our customers to expect to pay less.
I am concerned that this is what Coles and others discounting magazines will do – educate consumers to not pay full price for the popular magazine titles. I’d hate for that to happen. Look at major grocery items and liquor. These products are on a merry-go-round of discounting between the major chains. Smart shoppers never pay full price.
I’d hate for newsagents to be subjected to herds of customers chasing price. We rely on regular traffic – the peaks and troughs steep discounting is likely to cause could harm other parts of our business.
Some reading this may say that I discount already with the Magazine Club Card I created in 2004 and which has been adopted by newsXpress and some others. The Magazine Club Card is different. It rewards loyalty to the business. To achieve a free magazine, the customer has to purchase more than the average number of titles in a defined period.
The package discounting at Coles and some other retail outlets is trying to achieve the sale of two titles when a customer may only be shopping for one. While there is nothing wrong with that, the steep discount devalues the titles in my view and risks training customers to expect this as the norm.
I expect that the newsagency channel would be divided on the issue of discounting magazines. I do know of some newsagents who like the idea. What do you think? Would you participate if it were available to you?
US publishers Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corp., and Time Inc. announced overnight a joint venture to produce a platform that will allow consumers to read their publications as well as publications from other publishers on electronic devices like the iPhone, laptops, or e-readers. The announcement overnight brings reality to the speculation.
This paragraph from the press release highlights the opportunity:
For publishers and advertisers, the venture will offer an attractive, cost-efficient, consumer-focused environment. Advertisers will be able to utilize innovative formats that benefit from the highly engaging, interactive nature of this new medium. In addition to entirely new magazine and newspaper reading experiences, content selections may ultimately include books, comic books, blogs and other media.
While consumer engagement points with magazines in Australia is extremely different to the US, this move in the US will have implications here. The platforms (iPhone, e-readers, computers) which are the target of the platform are popular here.
The immediate context of the move is for distribution newsagents. This is further evidence of where News Corp. is focusing attention in developing new distribution channels.
One of the most popular books in our Christmas book sale this year is Jeanne Little’s Quick Cleaning Guide. Jeanne has been inn the news recently because of poor health but I don’t think this is the reason for its success. Jeanne is much loved and remembered. Nostalgia is a key driver of sales. The book is a good low-cost gift and, for us, a nice extension of the basket at above average margin.
The ANF has recently been pitching advertising in its yearbook, N-View to newsagent suppliers. The pitch includes:
The industry yearbook, N-View is an invaluable resource for the newsagency channel; distributed to newsagents, suppliers and new newsagents joining the industry. It is the who’s who and what’s what of the industry and includes best practice advice and practical information. This prestigious reference guide provides essential data and statistics in book form and online.
I don’t think N-View is invaluable to the channel any more. Newsagents and prospective newsagents are using other more up-to-date and transparent resources.
The respect for and influence of the ANF has faded. Leadership missteps by the Board, a revolving door of CEOs unable to guide the Board and a failure to faithfully serve newsagents has left the ANF less relevant than ever and, by association, its publications.
Newsagent suppliers are asked regularly by associations for financial support. This support needs to deliver measureable outcomes for it to be sustainable – it is newsagents who ultimately pay for the financial support privide to association projects such as N-View. Every $ given to an N-View ad or something similar is a $ less available to newsagents.
If I were able to influence the future of N-View, it would be to take N-View to an online only offer. I’d pitch to suppliers how much the ANF would invest of its own funds into the online model. I’d establish an independent editorial Board to ensure transparent editorial coverage of industry events and suppliers based on value and not what they pay. I’d create a website which is the go to resource for the channel, not because this is what I call it but because it is. This is the kind of leadership the ANF Board needs to deliver for N-View and other ANF publications to be relevant.
We are seeing excellent book sales from the catalogue which has been distributed to homes around our newsagency at Forest Hill. Books are a popular and easy gift – thanks to a range spanning all ages. The margin is excellent and the risk to us minimal. Some titles have sold so well that we have had to re stock.
This is our third year offering books at Christmas. They are as important to us as calendars and diaries. The marketing generates great traffic.
We are promoting New Idea at our price front counter position this week. While the free Christmas Made Easy lift out wins access to this position, it is the Tiger Woods cover story which will drive sales.
The Tiger story has not reached saturation yet from what I can tell. The New Idea cover taps into that interest. We will leave New Idea in this prime location until Wednesday.
We are giving Madison double the usual space to better display the free summer beach hat which comes with the current issue. we will hold this space for the first week. Hopefully the double exposure works as well for Madison as it has for Australian Women’s Weekly, Dolly and other titles we have take the same approach with recently.
With so many magazines with free gifts on the shelves at the moment, it is important to show off those with premium gifts – they are included to drive sales after all. This is why it is important for us to go the extra mile and find the space as shown in the photo.
We are promoting the latest issue of Prevention magazine next to our newspaper stand. This location has worked well for the for the new title so far and I don’t see a reason to change approach just year.
We also have Prevention in the women’s health area. We plan to move this feature display a couple of times during the on-sale period. It will remain here with newspapers for the first week.
Check out how The Sun is pitched against online news and mobile devices in the UK. Smart!
I’d note that The Sun is at the centre of a dispute between newsagents and News Internationa because the publisher revised down their cover price, cutting millions in newsagent commission annually.
Mark Day in his column in The Australian this morning weighs in on the debate between Google and News Corp. and that Google wants to be seen as a Digital newsagent. What interests me in Day’s piece is not so much his take on the Google / Publisher debate but his acknowledgement of two sides to the debate.
Logic suggests each side needs the other and in due course a compromise agreement will be reached.
Maybe he could talk with his employers about the debate raging among Australian newsagents about the take it or leave it contracts offered by News Limited. News is currently not demonstrating an appetite for compromise.
One example of the changed publisher / newsagent relationship is that newsagents have gone from a model where the publisher carries the financial cost of heavily discount newspaper home delivery to one now in South Australia where newsagents share the cost of the publisher controlled discounts. Newsagents have no real capacity in their model to leverage this in a way which helps fund the steep discount.
While logic would suggest a compromise, both sides need to have an appetite for compromise. Thousands of family run businesses are hoping for a change of heart within News Limited.
I was at a newsagency recently and discovered that they had sold only two copies of the latest issue of ACP Magazines’ Good Food. I was surprised since we have sold out of this same issue twice over. They had the title on the shelves and the free sample bag in the back room – yes, the back room! I took Good Food off the shelves and created the simple display in the photo on the corner of the counter at the front of the shop.
In just over a week they sold sixteen copies from this location. A simple move and good sales as a result.
How often do we fail to make the most of a good business opportunity? In the case of Good Food, the publisher has a good title promoted with a valuable giveaway and supported with strong marketing collateral. While the original display in this newsagency looked attractive, it did nothing to sell the magazine on impulse. Many good and great displays are lost in visually noisy newsagencies. Too many displays are not in the right location to actually sell product.
We make excuses about being time-poor, not having space, publishers sucking our cash. Sometimes we miss opportunities which lead us to see the magazine side of our business through negative eyes.
We need to be our own toughest critics if we are to make the most of opportunities which come our way. Being average does not cut it in retail, not in this marketplace.
I experienced a another reminder of the value of constantly moving stock yesterday. We have more calendars than facings in our display. This means we need to rotate titles so they all get browser time. Ten minutes after I moved The Lakes District calendars to the front of their pocket we sold one.
While some calendar shoppers will flip through the range looking for titles which interest them, others will purchase on impulse when they see a title which interests them or someone for whom they need a gift. Constantly moving titles drives excellent impulse sales.
Our calendar sales were up 23% in November compared to November 2008. This is based on unit sales. The excellent results are off a high base from last year. We are not discounting. This means a margin of 65% for most titles.
I put our success with calendars down to exceptional in-store management. Time is spent every day working the calendar display, keeping it tidy, moving titles where there are two or more in a pocket, monitoring stock – ordering more as necessary.
Our point of difference with calendars is range. The success of this is dependent on time investment. As the sales results show, it is paying off.
Newsagents have an opportunity to own the calendar space. For many this can be a department generating $10,000+ a year in sales from impulse and new traffic sales. Calendars are an excellent small step in building a more profitable newsagency of the future.
The customer who bought The Lakes District calendar yesterday did not visit our shop looking for this calendar. Every day we see impulse purchases of calendars like this.
The publisher of The Monthly magazine ought to look more carefully at sales data when developing allocations for their December/January double issue. We received double our usual supply last week. Last year, when they did this double issue, our sell through was 65%. While this is a good number, it is not do good when you consider the two month on-sale period. I’d be happy receiving half the stock this month and half next. Instead, they suck my cash and the cash of every other newsagent by loading us up front.
In my newsagency, The Monthly sells steadily through the on-sale period. This would be reflected in sales data provided to the distributor. A split delivery would not harm sales based on what I see. While there would be a higher distribution cost, that is a problem for the publisher. The current approach makes it a problem for me and other newsagents.
PaidContent is reporting that News Corp, Conde Nast, Meredith, Hearst and Time Inc. will announce next week the formation of a new company to fund the development of a digital newsstand. While mooted for some time, plans appear to be coming together.
Australian newsagents need to add this to the mix when considering the new newspaper distribution and retail contracts from News Limited.
Until now, publishers have left others to handle digital delivery – contrary of the models used for paper based products. This new consortiums publishers seeking to get control back of the farm. The challenge is the lead time. They need to keep current partners happy while they develop new channels and until they assess the impact of these new channels on the old.