Radical and indy magazines fight for newsstand survival in Britain

Access to conventional newsstands in Great Britain are increasingly being put beyond the reach of independent, radical and progressive magazines, according to an article in the Guardian. Magazines and papers distributed by the Independent News Collective (Ink) are being crowded out by more mainstream titles who can afford to pay premiums for space.

"Newsagents take what Smiths [News] tells them is selling well," says Peter McCaig, of Ink, which distributes radical titles such as New Internationalist, Permaculture and Red Pepper. "Which is fair enough. But the result is that money talks. You get porn titles in more easily than any magazine with a political view."

The collective was created in the 1990s, whereby indy titles collaborated and, within a short time were distributing some 22 titles in 300 shops, many of which were health food outlets and other non-traditional outlets. (This is very much like the Canadian Periodical Publishers Association (CPPA) did in Canada for indy titles at about the same time; Magazines Canada's direct-to-retail distribution system carries on that work for more than 150 Canadian magazines who cannot afford services, or don't fit the specs, of mainstream distributors.)

But with most supermarkets now offering organic products, health food shops are struggling against the competition [says the Guardian story] and the bigger ones – Fresh & Wild and Planet Organic – have dropped magazines in favour of higher-margin products, such as aromatherapy oils. Borders, which used to stock radical magazines, has closed. Last year one of the biggest-selling titles in the collective, the Ecologist, quit to go online.

Taken together, those lost sales hit Ink hard: "It's just about viable for me to continue doing this – part-time, single-handedly," says McCaig. "But I'm only treading water."