US publisher layoffs pass 10,000
PaperCuts, a website recording layoffs at US newspaper publishers, has just passed 10,000 layoffs this year.
Luring newspaper customers from retail to delivery
Retail outlets are important to newspaper publishers here in Australia. It is disappointing to see Fairfax today trying to switch people from retail purchase to home delivery using an ad stuck on the front of The Age newspaper. I’d prefer to see them invest in increasing retail sales like News Limited is doing with their mX coupon promotion this week.
NDD to trial Australia Post delivery of magazines
Magazine distributor NDD sent the following to newsagents in the Newcastle area this week:
NDD will undertake a trial delivering NDD product into the Newcastle area via Australia Post for both newsagent and supermarkets for a three week period for onsale Wednesday 3 Jun; Wednesday 10 June and Wednesday 17 June 09.
It is anticipated that your store will receive the NDD Delivery of magazine daytime Tuesday prior to the onsale.
The key parcels and bulks will be stickered with an Australia Post barcode for tracking.
British Football and Inside Football will be delivered by 1st Fleet on the Wednesday.
Publishers discuss charging for online content
PaidContent reports that a group of US newspaper executives met secretly to discuss charging for online content. Their next moves will be crucial. If they get this wrong they will suffer the same consequences of films, videos and music and have their content made available free through a variety of sources online. The Atlantic has good coverage on this story too.
Publishers need to understand that their main funding has not come from charging for access to content, it has come from advertising. To try and monetise content online through consumer payment will require a significant shift. I don’t see this working.
Look at what Dennis in the UK has done. They have created new online brands for specific demographics. They have engaged advertiser support. The financial model is based entirely around the new model and not trying to fund the high cost of the old (print) model. Look at what Crikey has done here in Australia – a pure online brand, subscription and advertiser supported and, again, based entirely around the new model.
Publishers trying to backend their operations into an online content paid for model is a recipe for failure. The people to build monetise content online most successfully will be more likely not currently working for a print media company.
Go back to the interview with Rupert Murdoch to which I referred earlier today. In discussing weather and similar services he says people will have to pay for this. No, they will not. It is too late for publishers to try and charge for what is free from so many sources.
Rupert Murdoch on newspapers
Here is Rupert Murdoch talking about the future of newspapers. A must watch for newsagents. The opening questions is: will there be newspapers?
This interview is interesting in the context of contract newspaper distribution negotiations. I remain unconvinced about the need for contracts.
The interview follows an ad for the Fox Business Network.
Every day there are more stories about this topic yet newsagents continue to agree to build shop fits with expensive purpose-built newspaper and magazine stands. Our shop fits need to be flexible, able to change without additional capital cost.
What the interview and see for yourself the changes we need to embrace in our newsagency businesses.
I respect Rupert Murdoch. He knows what his business stands for and pursues that relentlessley. He also cleverly uses his own channels, like Fox Business Channel, to preach his message. We can learn from this. We have a traffic rich channel today yet many of us are not using this to take our customer’s hands and lead them to our future. This is because we don;t know what the future is and because we are scared about engagement with our customers. But those are conversations for another time.
UPDATE: Check out the coverage this has received in the last 24 hoours. Murdoch’s important place in this discussion is obvious.
Driving extra magazine sales.
We have been recording good sales from the single pockets of Take 5 and That’s Life which we have been placing above New Idea and Woman’s Day in recent weeks.
Take 5 and That’s Life are located four columns to the right from the location in the photo – further into our women’s magazine aisle and while some are sales we would have received anyway, some are sure to be sales solely due to additional placement of the titles.
We will rest Take 5 and That’s Life in this location shortly and focus on other titles likely to be purchased by New Idea and Woman’s Day customers.
We find this additional placement works well on the weekend, when the less ferquent magazine shopper shops.
How do you stop porn magazines in a newsagency?
We have been early returning Swank porn magazine to NDD because it did not sell. We expected that supply would be reduced as a result of no sales recorded – trusting the magazine distribution system. Well, not really. Here we are, months on, zero sales and we still receive the title. The NDD system is failing us. I am not against us carrying porn.
My preference for erotica / porn titles is the same as the rest of my newsagency – branded product with a market presence and good promotion to drive interest. Swank is not such a title. I wish we had more control – it’s my money at risk here.
Rupert Murdoch says the future is digital
Instead of an analog paper printed on paper you may get it on a panel which would be mobile, which will receive the whole newspaper over the air, (and) be updated every hour or two. You’ll be able to get the guts or the main headlines and alerts and everything on your Blackberry, on your Palm or whatever, all day long. All these things are possible. Some of the greatest electronics companies in the world are working on this very hard.
This is a quote from Rupert Murdoch speaking overnight in an interview with the Fox Business Network. He provides more clarity than the News Limited executive interviewd locally for the ABC’s 7.30 report earlier this week.
This quote is important because it clarifies the situation for newsagents on News’ longer term view of a paper product. It also fits with what Murdoch has said previously about how consumers will access information previously accessed on paper.
Starwood Hotels to embrace digital magazines
Starwood Hotels group announced this week that they’ve entered into a partnership with Zinio to offer what they are calling a Digital Newsstand for free to guests in several of their hotel brands including the Four Points by Sheraton hotel properties. Hotel Chatter has more on this.
Also, Starwood will be the first hotel company to offer VIVmag, the first interactive digital women’s luxury-lifestyle magazine, conceived and designed exclusively to be read digitally.
Darrell Lea Espresso Crunch with a lottery ticket
Darrell Lea is using smart attractive counter units, as shown in the photo, to help us introduce new products at the counter and thereby drive impulse purcahses. The Espresso Crunch is a stylish looking product. We have it at our lottery counter where we know Darrell Lea product sells well. Now if only they would develop a free standing slim floor unit which we could locate at register points for promoting top selling products.
Embroidery & Cross Stitch fails to sell
Embroidery & Cross Stitch is another Express Publications title with problems. We received 9 copies of the last issue and today returned 8. It is junk like these triple packs from Express which detract from beautiful cross stitch titles which look more appealing and often sell better. With a sell through of just 11%, I would expect the magazine distributor to reduce supply. When it comes to Express titles I am not confident of this. On a side issue – I wonder if advertisers know that issues containing their ads are recycled through these triple packs on a never-ending petrol guzzling cycle.
Recycling barcodes on magazines
The issue of Fishing Knots & Rigs which went on sale this morning has a barcode which the publisher reusing a barcode which has been used for two other titles in the last year. Express Publications are behind this – the same people who waste our space with double and triple packed bags of magazines which waste our space and cash.
The distributor ought to have refused to distribute today’s title because it fails to meet reasonable data standards.
Is sale or return holding newsagents back?
Newsagents in Australia have been brought up on sale or return supply arrangements for stock. They have served us well.
Sale or Return is the supply basis for magazines, newspapers, greeting cards and a range of stationery and gift items to newsagencies in Australia. Newsagents like SOR because they (we) see less of a risk if the products do not sell. Suppliers, especially those in the stationery and gift categories, know this and pitch SOR when introducing new lines.
I wonder if SOR lowers our expectation for products – because of the parachute of SOR which ‘protects’ us from failure.
We ought to assess new products as if SOR ‘protection’ does not exist. I suspect that some products we take on today would not make it. I also suspect we would work harder to move products and be more demanding when new products are presented.
The greater the risk we take the more focused we are on driving our success. SOR dilutes that risk and takes our focus away from being profit focused.
Finding space for new magazines
We received Good Garden Design on Wednesday for the first time and was surprised to see it heralded, above the masthead, as Australia’s Best Selling Garden Design Magazine. I thought if it’s the best then why are we only getting this title now. But I digress, the problem was that our space allocation for the category was fully used. So, we had to remove a title in order to accomodate this new (to us) title. To be fair to other publishers, we looked at space allocated to Universal magazines – the publisher of Good Garden Design.
Monkey digital magazine expands
Monkey, the free weekly digital men’s magazine launched in the UK in February 2007, is launching in Sweden, Denmark and Norway with a local partner. The Guardian has the details. It is only a matter of time before we see a local edition of Monkey for Australia as well as a local edition of their other successful free digital titles iGizmo and iMotor.
Monkey, iGizmo and iMotor are all good well targeted titles. To see how magazines are changing, check out their websites. From a newsagent perspective, we need to understand that the Dennis Publishing model is built around a direct publisher / consumer relationship. The traditional distribution channel does not exist. Newsagents are not needed to collect subscriptions – these titles are free. There are no returns, no sales data to be collected by a network of outlets operating at different levels of compliance. Best of all for advertisers – there is accurate data on advertisement engagement.
Art Australia is like art in a gallery – look don’t buy
Art Australia does not sell in our newsagency. We return what we receive. NDD knows this yet they continue to send the title – as a demonstration of their distribution skills (not!). The best way for NDD to respond to this blog post and other complaints about oversupply is for them to fix the problem and deliver supply on equitable terms. Titles with less than 60% sell through are loss making for shopping centre newsagents yet NDD continues to send titles like Art Australia which deliver a 0% sell through.
NDD would be better off investing the money they are spending on legal pursuit of me because posts at this blog on fixing the supply model which is sucking my cash and the cash of other newsagents through oversupply as described above.
Handyman magazine sales collapse
Sales of Handyman magazine have collapsed in our newsagency. Yesterday we returned all but one copy of the last issue. This is at a huge cost to our business. The segment is over satisfied with local and overseas titles and the differences between the titles is not great. We will try and cut titles but not all magazine distributors attend to newsagent requests. This is where the distribution model is flawed – if a supplier does not allow newsagents to manage this part of their business then they should not expect newsagents to shoulder the financial risk.
The impact of the Internet on US newspapers
At the ABC’s 7.30 Report website is an excellent extended interview with former journalist and Crime novelist Laura Lippman about the demise of newspapers in the US. The interview provides an excellent back story to the impact the Internet and corporate takeovers on newspapers. I especially found Lippman’s comments about newspaper publisher interest in pursuing ‘young poeple’ interesting.
Publishers here will tell us that Lippman speaks from a US perspective and they will be right. The changes she discusses are happening here – our model is such that it will take some time for the changes to be noticied.
Newsagents and those claiming to represent newsagents need to watch this interview as it provides a perspective of opportunities (or challenges depending on your perspective of change) which remain undiscussed in newsagent circles. We need to create our own leadership through these opportunities.
EDI compliance guidance for newsagents
Given the interest here in my EDI post from two days ago, click here for a copy of the ten-page EDI compliance document being provided by Tower Systems at the national EDI / XchangeIT compliance training workshops currently being delivered to 1,600 Tower Newsagents nationally.
While parts of the document are Tower Systems specific,there is sufficient general content to be of help to non-Tower newsagents.
Playing with puzzles
We are playing in the jigsaw puzzle space at Forest Hill and early sales are very good. Our team has selected puzzles based on successes from our calendar range. The Planet Zoo range looks great! Each features an appealing image. There is a social responsibility connection – a portion of each sale is donated to a wildlife organisation by the folks at Planet Zoo.
We find calendar sales are an excellent resource when looking at other parts of the business for opportunities. They demonstrate popular interests – as do magazines.
While we’re not about retire on the sales of puzzles, they are extending the focus of our business and helping achieve gift purchases from our customers which would otherwise have been satisfied elsewhere.
Combat Tank Collection part 2 out now
Issue 2 of the Combat Tank Collection partwork went on sale yesterday. Newsagents I have spoken with are chasing back copies of part 1 to satisfy special orders. This series is surpassing expectations from what I can see – a welcome outcome in an otherwise lean year for partworks. The supply model for partworks, while better than years ago, still has a way to go if publishers, distributors and newsagents want to achieve the maximum sell-through.
Managing Swine Flu risk in retail
With swine flu significantly impacting at us at our Epping Plaza location in Victoria – McDonalds around the corner from us was closed for most of the day – I thought I’d share the simple steps we are taking for peace of mind of our team and of our customers:
- Regular use of an alcohol based and cleaner by staff.
- Hourly wiping of the counter from the customer side.
- Regular cleaning of other surfaces touched by customers.
- Keeping tissues within easy reach at the counter.
We are not alarmed, just cautious and keen to show our customers this. The Victorian Government Health website has more information.
This is the same centre which pulls some customers from communities impacted by the bushfires earlier this year.
Newsagent interest in NSW lotteries under the spotlight
Crikey today published a story by Alex Mitchell about newsagent interest in purchasing a stake in NSW Lotteries. I mentioned this on May 1 when NANA, the NSW Newsagent’s Association wrote to members announcing its intention. The Crikey story has some interesting points:
Newsagencies in NSW have been complaining loudly about the forthcoming privatization of NSW Lotteries because of the impact on their revenue streams and the value of their businesses.
So they’ve decided to put in a bid themselves.
On Friday the Newsagents’ Association of NSW and ACT Ltd has a meeting with Treasurer Eric Roozendaal, former general secretary of the NSW Labor Party, who is leading the privatization push.
Under the bank-backed newsagents’ proposal, the government would retain a majority 51 per cent shareholding and the association the other 49 per cent.
Whether this gets up or not, it is goot to see newsagents taking a yes we can approach to such a challenge.
That’s Life set for a bumper week
We bumped the Family Circle promotion from our premiun front counter location to make way for That’s Life and the free MasterFoods pack which comes with each issue. This was an opportunity too good to pass up. The free gift is excellent value. We expect it to work very well with our demographic. We will re-position Family Circle next week or when, hopefully, That’s Life sells out. Given the shape of the MasterFoods gift it was a challenge to display the product in our usual way so we have adopted the simple stack approach.
Promoting Annette Sym cover on Lovatts BIG
Annette Sym graces the cover of the latest issue of Christine’s BIG Crossword from Lovatts. Annette’s Symply Too Good Cookbooks have been sold in newsagencies for years. We are promoting BIG and Annette’s books at the end of our busiest magazine aisle. We also have BIG in the crossword section and in a pocket on the display near our main lottery counter. Click on the image to see a larger version of the photo. We were fortunate to have Annette at our store for a demonstration a few years back – she was very popular with our customers.