The magazine industry’s spin doctors were working hard late last week, trying to find some good news in the Roy Morgan research readership figures for the last 12 months to March 31.

In most cases they failed. The Morgan numbers contained few bright spots for most consumer magazine publishers, prompting the usual dark mutterings about flaws in the Morgan system.

Page 21, Australian Financial Review, May 21. All the magazine industry was doing was singing from the same hymn book the newspaper industry has used for the last few years.

The value of the Australian newsagency channel is clear when you read this piece by Bill Moyers about the plight of small independent magazine publishers in the US in the face of a rate hike from the US Postal Service – most independent small magazines are distributed direct to subscribers in the US by post.

While in the US the publishers face the problem alone – given almost no retail footprint for independent titles – in Australia newsagents are part of the equation. We have actively supported independent titles for over 100 years but now that the major publishers are driving traffic to other magazine retailers, the cost of carrying independent titles is under the spotlight.

As Moyers points out, this is a social issue. Unfortunately, the social value of newsagencies is lost on the federal Government.

The Telegraph in the UK is reporting that Emap is planning to pull several titles from publication. Of interest to me is that two car titles are included – it’s a category under challenge. While I have no data to support the claim, I’d say browsing is down if anecdotal comments from newsagents is anything to go by.

Annette Sym’s cookbook series is an Australian independent publishing success story. The active approach by Annette and her husband in promoting her cookbook series through newsagencies is an excellent model for others to follow. Annette visited our newsagency a year and a half ago for a day of demonstrations. We reward that loyalty with regular displays in-store.

Symply Too Good To be True 5 has just been released and we’ve sold 20 copies in three weeks. That’s five times the sales of any other cookbook title in our newsagency. It says something about the strength of the Symply brand as well as their approach to marketing.

The approach of Annette and her husband speaks to the issues I often raise here about fringe independent titles. It is not enough for an independent title to be merely sent ton newsagents expecting it’s presence on the shelf to work. The key is promotion. Annette does in-store visits, provides a DVD to play on loop showing a recipe being made, provides posters and regularly updates her range. Compare this with other indy Australian titles – the vast majority offer nothing to support sales.

If independent Australian magazine publishers want to grow their sales in newsagencies they ought to look at what Annette Sym and her husband are doing – get involved, actively support your title, do more than send stock and a couple of posters. Actively partner with newsagents and they will respond.

Hello! sold out in our newsagency in under two days and the Queen on the cover is the reason. Once we saw the cover of the magazine we moved it next to our range of English magazines. We’ve done this previously but not with the success of this issue – moving titles based on their covers is, in our view, an important part of magazine retailing.

I’d be interested in worldwide sales for this issue as I suspect the Queen cover has proven to be very popular.

Given the private contact from people working for magazine distributors over the last two weeks following my recent blog posts here about the need for a magazine czar, I’d suggest that there is support for such a move.

The magazine distributors appear to want to cut the unprofitable and barely profitable titles but don’t want to give either of the other two players an opportunity to bulk up. Listening to one of the talk it sounded like they were worried about the side effects of dealing with an addiction.

It’s time for action. All this busy work for the sake of stopping a competitor carrying the same dead or dying titles is helping no one. At least the distributors are paid for their efforts. Newsagents are not.

Warning, this is a petty blog post. We found a glob of chewing gum stuck on the back of UK Mini Magazine in our NDD product this morning. Our question is whether this is gum from within Australia or from the UK? Regardless, we’re not stocking the title this month. The glob is seriously stuck on and removing it would damage the product so better for the NDD gum experts to take care of it.

While the Canon 350D may be a good camera, I don’t see the value in a product specific magazine being supplied to newsagents. I received two copies this morning and have returned both. At $19.95 I am not prepared to take the theft risk. In making the decision to early return I have considered sell through rates for other photography titles – something the allocation ‘experts’ at NDD could have done in deciding on the scale out.

This is a title a on which Magazine Czar employed by newsagents could have imposed additional fees for us to carry it. The three month shelf life suggests it will not be an early seller – every month is additional real-estate and labour cost. This is what a Czar could take into account before allowing a title to access our valuable network.

Is a bikini clad girl necessary to make PC Format sell? This pretty lass on the UK magazine does not have any connection to the contents of the PC magazine that I can find.

While I cannot recall how long PC Format has been using girls on the cover, I wonder if it is part of their strategy to counter falling sales in the computer category.

Some people have commented here in the past about the use of girls on computer and motorbike magazines so there is some negative feeling in the broader marketplace.

I was surprised to see this puzzle book / magazine come from ACP magazines. Under the banner of Australian Women’s Weekly, the contents appear to be a consolidation of content from Puzzler crossword and puzzle publications.

While on could argue that the AWW moniker makes it interesting to customers, I’d note that crossword customers are loyal. Getting them to try a new ‘brand’ is a challenge – especially when the brand is not known in that space.

We’re giving the title a crack in the crossword area as well as next to Women’s Weekly.