I am undertaking a sales benchmark study comparing January-March 2009 against January-March 2008. Tower Newsagents can participate by sending a Monthly Sales Comparison report: tick the box to exclude home deliveries, and tick the box for a category breakdown. Set your first date range (on the left) to January 1, 2009 to March 31, 2009 and the date range of the right to one year earlier. Once the report is on the screen, click the PDF button to save this as a PDF, go into your email software and send a copy of the PDF to me at mark@tower… Newsagents not using Tower software should click here for a spreadsheet template. I’ll publish the benchmark results here and elsewhere so all newsagents can benefit.

UPDATE (3.50PM): I have now received sales data from 40 newsagencies.  I’d expect to have data from more than 100 by the end of the week.  This will be a good dataset.

Australian newsagents today launch a new magazine to the Sudoku, Addoku, Kakuro and Crossword lovers of Australia. Newsdoku is a new type of puzzle, a WORLD FIRST. Each puzzle will take between four and twelve hours to complete and involves maths, detective skills and pure luck.

Modelled on the newsagents magazine allocations and accounting model used to supply magazine to newsagents, Newsdoku has a sting in the tail in that when you think you have got it right, the rules change and you are back to square one. If your game has not been cancelled in the meantime.  While the usual game will run for a month, some run for six months.  Others come back again and again even when you have done them because everyone knows we cannot get enough of a good things.

You can call the national Newsdoku help line for help but this results in penalty points and the loss of time – and their advice has a 50/50 chance of heading you down the worng path for which you will be responsible and not the national help line.

Ask your local newsagent about Newsdoku. It will be in the back room.