Here is Australia Post’s latest retail catalogue. It strays further from the products and services permitted under the Act yet the politician don’t care. They don’t care that more than 850 government owned retail outlets take home and small business stationery sales from newsagents under the successful and respected Australia Post shingle.

This latest catalogue promotes: plush farm animals; USB sticks; copy paper; office stationery; Norton security and plenty of other items which have nothing to do with providing a postal service.

I am angered than the Federal Government has allowed Australia Post government owned stores to encroach deeply into newsagent territory unchecked and that the politicians who have presided over this don’t even have the guts to answer simple letters of complaint about the unfair competition. If it were their personal investment being eroded by a government enterprise I am certain their would be action.

Their excuse is that Australia Post needs to diversify to cover its costs. If that is the case why is this an Australian problem. We don’t see it in the US, Australia, France or the UK. Indeed in the EU even the postal service is about to become highly competitive. Here, Australia Post has protected foot traffic and they leverage that to take sales from newsagencies like mine.

The noise in our shop and back room has been debilitating this last four weeks, so much so that customers turn and walk out. Magazines have been the hardest hit. Our sales growth is consistently above average yet over the last four weeks, magazine sales are down 17%. Magazines are a browsing experience and with the retail space so uncomfortable people don’t browse and so they don’t buy.

We’re talking with the landlord about the financial impact of the noise.

I am hosting, through my software company, a series of business round table sessions for newsagents over the next few weeks. These will be proactive and open discussions among newsagents who want to achieve the best from their businesses. Free of politics, I am hoping the sessions will help those participating navigate challenging business issues – come along prepared to actively participate.

The round table discussions are being held prior to user meetings for newsagents using Tower software. Any newsagent is welcome to attend. I promise, it’s not a sales pitch.

The businesses round table starts at 10am (sharp!). The user meeting will start by 11:45am. Locations are: Sydney. Tuesday April 17; Brisbane. Wednesday April 18; Melbourne. Thursday April 19; Canberra. Friday April 20; Geelong. Tuesday April 2; Hobart. Thursday April 26; Adelaide. Tuesday May 1; Perth. Wednesday May 2; Newcastle. Tuesday May 8.

You can book by emailing bookings@towersystems.com.au. We need your business name, the session you are booking for and the number of attendees.

Based on bookings for this first set of dates we will add Cairns, Wollongong, Darwin and Gold Coast next week. We don’t announce all at once as the meetings are expensive in terms of labour, room hire and travel costs and we like to gauge interest in the series.

Big W offers 10% off for mobile phone recharge. This discount is greater than the commission newsagents receive from Vodafone and what they are about to receive from Optus. I suspect than Big W is on around 16% which newsagents are on 5% and, I suspect, falling.

There are 3,500 newsagent outlets offering phone recharge. If we cannot leverage that footprint and what must be considerable sales for a better outcome I expect newsagents will start to withdraw from offering the service given the considerable infrastructure cost.

I was surprised to see this story in The Australian today about a decision by the board of the Australian Newsagents Federation (ANF) to reject a proposal which could have unified newsagents into one national association by 2009. The proposal came out of a meeting held on March 14 and organised by the ANF.

The Australian story seems to me to have been ‘placed’ – some digging by Sally Jackson would have unearthed a more complete story.

I was invited by the ANF to participate in the March 14 meeting along with representatives of the Boards of the ANF and state based newsagent associations in NSW (NANA) and QLD (QNF) as well as the Chairman of the Victorian association (VANA).

The ANF goal was to seek out common ground with a view to ending years of fighting between the associations.

The six hour meeting involved frank discussion about issues which have seen the ANF fighting the states and vice versa for many years including the challenged of domineering personalities who have ‘led’ newsagents through this time. All participants talked openly and passionately about what they felt was best for newsagents. They remained focused on the goal of what is best for newsagents and the acceptance that bickering serves no purpose.

A common and unanimous position was reached at the meeting and documented in a letter of intent. All attending were confident that their Boards would agree and that at last fighting between the national and state associations would end.

The NANA and QNF Boards supported the letter of intent. The ANF Board decided to not support it, dashing the hopes of achieving unity among newsagents in the short to medium term.

The ANF must now actively compete with newsagent associations in NSW and QLD for members. To win, they must financially harm these newsagent owned bodies. Such a fight does not serve newsagents well. It will result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars of newsagent funds.

The ANF Board, in rejecting unanimous position which was reached at the meeting it convened on March 14, has, in my view, demonstrated that personality politics is alive and well at its Board table as there is no other explanation for the rejection of the letter of intent. It has also demonstrated who controls the national body and it’s not the Directors who participated in the peace discussions.

Between them, NANA and QNF have 1,000 members. The ANF has around 1,750 members. Bringing the NSW and QLD members into that group immediately would provide the ANF with greater strength in negotiations with suppliers. The cost of this weakness will be felt by newsagents for years to come.

This is the story I would have liked to see run in The Australian today.

The Economist has an excellent article on the future of books. It’s written against the backdrop of the Google book project which sees the company digitising 3,000 books a day from one university library alone.

The article draws parallels with music and that the album had died in favor of the song – people can purchase and listen to what they want as opposed the a complete package. I think there are considerations here for magazines and newspapers where single articles may be more valuable to some readers than the whole printed product we know today.