Let's explore the "day old bread" approach to selling single copies
Why don't we have "back issue" newsstands? Not everywhere, but in appropriate and selected places where readers can browse the previous issue or issues of magazines which have a relatively timeless quality?
It wouldn't work for a current affairs magazine or other time-sensitive titles like city magazines, but aren't there shelter and design magazines, literary and cultural publications that, instead of making the automatic ignominious journey to the shredder could have a discounted second lease on life? Why shouldn't magazines be sold on a "reduced to clear" basis? Why shouldn't the clerks move certain magazines a short distance to another rack rather than shipping them a long distance back to the distributors?
Go into some independent bookstore (say, like Pages in Toronto) and you'll find back copies of Print magazine for sale, on the principle that the pictures and the words are still a valuable resource. They are treated much the same as "remainder" books. (In some cases, such back issues actually command a premium.)
For newsstands and bookstores that wanted to do it, how much more sense would it make to have a special "day old bread" rack to which magazines could move, a sort of halfway house where they could be sold for a half price or some such discount?
For smaller circulation magazines wouldn't it be more attractive to get 50 cents or even 25 cents on the dollar rather than see the copies automatically destroyed when the next issue comes out? For many literary journals, the unit manufacturing cost is in the $10 to $15 range. It's a crashing shame that they get treated as disposable. (If the public ever catches on to the fact that as a business model we shred 60 magazines to sell 40, they'll crucify us.)
There would be a lot of logistical challenges, of course and, as I say, it might only work some places and with some magazines. It might be speculated that people would buy a back issue instead of a full-price current issue, but that makes no more sense than saying people at a grocery store wouldn't buy bread at all unless it was in the "reduced to clear"bin.
The "day old bread" analogy (not original to me -- I read it several years ago in excellent research done by Abacus Circulation Inc. into the single copy sales sector) is not a perfect one. But it seems to me to be something worth exploring as a pilot project. Not only could it divert magazines from the shredder (or, at least, defer their destruction) but it might also become an other stream of revenue. And make us feel better about what we do.
It wouldn't work for a current affairs magazine or other time-sensitive titles like city magazines, but aren't there shelter and design magazines, literary and cultural publications that, instead of making the automatic ignominious journey to the shredder could have a discounted second lease on life? Why shouldn't magazines be sold on a "reduced to clear" basis? Why shouldn't the clerks move certain magazines a short distance to another rack rather than shipping them a long distance back to the distributors?
Go into some independent bookstore (say, like Pages in Toronto) and you'll find back copies of Print magazine for sale, on the principle that the pictures and the words are still a valuable resource. They are treated much the same as "remainder" books. (In some cases, such back issues actually command a premium.)
For newsstands and bookstores that wanted to do it, how much more sense would it make to have a special "day old bread" rack to which magazines could move, a sort of halfway house where they could be sold for a half price or some such discount?
For smaller circulation magazines wouldn't it be more attractive to get 50 cents or even 25 cents on the dollar rather than see the copies automatically destroyed when the next issue comes out? For many literary journals, the unit manufacturing cost is in the $10 to $15 range. It's a crashing shame that they get treated as disposable. (If the public ever catches on to the fact that as a business model we shred 60 magazines to sell 40, they'll crucify us.)
There would be a lot of logistical challenges, of course and, as I say, it might only work some places and with some magazines. It might be speculated that people would buy a back issue instead of a full-price current issue, but that makes no more sense than saying people at a grocery store wouldn't buy bread at all unless it was in the "reduced to clear"bin.
The "day old bread" analogy (not original to me -- I read it several years ago in excellent research done by Abacus Circulation Inc. into the single copy sales sector) is not a perfect one. But it seems to me to be something worth exploring as a pilot project. Not only could it divert magazines from the shredder (or, at least, defer their destruction) but it might also become an other stream of revenue. And make us feel better about what we do.
posted by D. B. Scott at
6:15 am
10 Comments:
Nothing prevents retailers from doing this. Distributors do not force retailers to return copies, although if they wanted to try this strategy, they might want to ask to be excluded from the usual O/R system.
Why don't they?
For all titles, there would be an inventory carrying cost to the retailer.
For titles with a heavy reliance on ad revenue, there would be the impossibility of accurately measuring newsstand circ and readership.
Quite right; retailers could ask to do it, provided they saw benefit to their bottom lines. Perhaps they don't because they don't perceive they will make any money on it; or perhaps nobody has suggested it to them.
I can see the point about advertising but since a returned, shredded magazine is not measured at all, perhaps a "sold on" back issue would actually increase awareness and readership.
If, as most of us assume, scan-based trading is coming, then a retailer could use the technology to track the transfer of some titles to the "day old" rack.
I don't deny that there would be logistical, cost and tracking issues to be sorted out.
There is a quality loss that is implied when selling "day old bread". The thing with magazines is that there is no loss of quality if it were to sit an extra week or month (in most cases).
There is no incentive for the purchaser to buy it at the regular price.
In Russia (at least the last time I was there), you could buy older issues of magazines for a discounted price - the older, the cheaper. Not sure if this was an official thing or just people reselling instead of shredding, but people were buying.
This strategy sounds like a good idea in a lot of ways, but it would mean that publishers (especially of quarterlies) could not predict the date an issue would close--and when they would receive a payment for copies sold. For distributors, it might mean sending out more cheques of smaller amounts--i.e. it might add administration to an already complex system. Also, wouldn't customers, if they knew an issue was going to be "remaindered" after a certain amount of time, just wait around until after their magazine became stale-dated and buy it at an even greater discount? Who would pay for this discount--the retailer, the publisher or the distributor or all three?
About 2/3 of a given monthly's copies are sold in the first two weeks of going on sale; I don't think that there'd be a wholesale switch to waiting for issues to be discounted. It seems more likely that people might buy a back issue with a particular story or them that appealed to them in addition to the current issue. But I have no proof for this. (My post is not about a watertight business case.)
Some mechanism to make sales of back issues non-returnable at a reasonable price to the retailer would surely meet the objection that it would delay payment to publishers. They already wait months now to get reports and to see issues finally closed. Would this (and the prospect of getting some more revenue and a crack at a few new subscribers) be so much worse?
I agree with anonymous that the bread analogy isn't the greatest because of the expectation that it should be cheaper because it is older.
we run a a niche art magazine and back issues with artwork and articles are timeless. We charge the customer more than the cover price because it costs us to store these extra copies... I do suppose I'm missing the point about retail.
If you go to a CD store and look for the Beatles, or early Blue Rodeo, you are expected to pay more, not less, even though the music is "out of date".
Hey, I'm more than prepared to look at a model where art and literary publications charge a premium for back issues in retail stores. Maybe the "discount" idea should be a "prem ium" idea (that would certainly deal with an earlier commenter's concern about people deferring their purchase until the magazine goes on sale.)
So, what about a "premium rack" on which high quality, relatively timeless issues are put and sold at retail? A retailer might not object to the attendant handling if there's some money in it. Tracking would be an issue, but how would it be more complicated than stocking and tracking paperback books?
It will never happen. One of the corner stones of magazine revenue is Audited Circulation and the Circulation Auditing Boards position is that magazines have a life that expires at the time of the next issue.
As it stands right now if an issue is delivered after, the next publication date those issues delivered late are deducted from the total, even if the following issue is not delivered.
The principles of the auditing system are last century and have no provision for latent or residual value.
It is completely bizarre but an article in a magazine is deemed to expire with the next issue, the article may also be posted on the Magazines Web site, and may collect interest and revenue for years, but that does not count.
I understand about the arcane auditing requirements, but once a magazine is "returned", that's an end of it as far as the auditor is concerned; ABC or BPA has no interest in the leftover copies that are on their way to the shredder. My suggestion is simply that some of these be diverted by the retailer, with the publisher's permission, to a "back issue" rack, rather than being shipped straight to the shredder. The transaction would take place completely outside of the audit process. Or am I missing something?
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