Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence
Courtesy of BoSacks and The Precision Media Group 
America's Oldest e-newsletter est.1993
TV

Sales are contingent upon the attitude of the salesman - not the attitude of the prospect.

W. Clement Stone 

The Balance Between Draw and Sales

Publishers are trimming their one- and two-copy accounts.

BY LINDA RUTH

http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/

 

 "You cut draw, you cut sale."

 

That was the wisdom of the newsstand years ago when I got into this business. It's a truism that came in for a lot of criticism and finally cycled out of favor when MagNet established a database of sales that enables a publisher or distributor to identify, on a national level, just where efficiencies need work-down to the individual retail outlet.

 

Suddenly it was a whole new world out there, where publishers could regain control of their distribution, where they could cut out unsolds and realize the profits that should be had in their newsstand sales.

 

Because despite the dictate of another piece of conventional wisdom, which insists that publishers don't care about unsold copies, that they will sacrifice limitless points in efficiency to meet their rate bases, most of the publishers I know actually are trying their darndest to bring up efficiencies. They are running their bucket analyses and cutting off the low buckets; they are paring back in channels and outlets and states and regions where returns are high; they are tightening, tightening, tightening.

 

In some cases, they are tightening too much.

"Why is it," a publisher asked me, "that every time I cut out my unsold copies, sales fall off and my efficiencies stay exactly where they were?"

 

Jim Onorato, Senior VP of Hudson News Company, has a answer for that. "In spite of everything, we're seeing that it still holds true, you cut draw you cut sale. You can't grow sale if you don't have enough copies to sell. We're seeing draws cut all over the country; some magazines deserve it, sure, but some don't."

 

"There are many publications out there that will never be at 50 percent," a national distributor executive recently told me. "Many publications have a strong core audience, but only one or two will buy a given issue at a given outlet. But if you only put one or two copies in, you get lost on the rack, you have no display."

 

"We're cutting our allotments 30 percent this issue," another large publisher commented. "We're pulling out of the one- and two-copy accounts entirely, and adding copies to the accounts that show some life. Minimum five copies per store is what we're looking for. Otherwise there is just no sense in bothering."

 

I asked Onorato what had changed to make publishers more conservative. "There's a negative downward pressure that has to have an impact," he told me. "Constant negativity can't be healthy for any business. It doesn't create a healthy environment. It's like a teacher saying to the students you are really no good you shouldn't be here. What does the student think?"

 

But how, with the daily barrage of bad news, could publishers be anything but negative about their print sales? "There is plenty of good news out there, if someone would tell it,"

 

 Onorato said. "Elle Décor is up. Vogue's September issue was 900 pages, maybe three copies to a bundle. At Hudson News we have stores, the biggest stores in the city, re-order magazines every single week without fail. They are looking for issues they know are coming."

 

And what about the customer? I asked. "Their customers are readers. Their customers walk in, and they are always looking for magazines."
 
Linda Ruth is Principal of Publisher Single Copy Sales Services. Her book of case studies, "How to Market Your Magazine on the Newsstand," is available at BookDojo.com and atAmazon.

bo"The Industry that Vents Together Stays Together"  
Responses to all Articles and Bo-Rants are greatly encouraged and may be included in " BoSacks Readers Speak Out"  =======================================
All news items and the various opinions expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily the opinion of, nor in agreement with the opinions of BoSacks. They are just interesting thoughts and other opinions that BoSacks thinks you should know about.  
After all, as the Japanese proverb goes: 
"If you believe everything you read, perhaps you better not read." 

"Heard on the Web" Media Intelligence:  
Courtesy of  The Precision Media Group.   
Print, Publishing and Media Consultants 
193 Brookwood Drive, Charlottesville VA 22902
Contact - Robert M. Sacks  917-566-7437
BoSacks@aol.com
http://www.bosacks.com
WHO IS BOSACKS ?
  ========================================
SUBSCRIBE -  If this free opt-in newsletter has been forwarded to you, and you wish to subscribe, simply go to 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
UNSUBSCRIBE - Look at the bottom for the safe-unsubscribe button

Orange
Like us on Facebook
Publishers Press

Blue Toad

BtoB

tippingpoint

baby Reading