Let me just say that one more time: 11 million fans (Currently 11.9 million fans).

Unsurprisingly, many of her fans took her exhortation to heart and went around and did this:

From: Twitter

And they also did this:

From: Allieiswired.com. I wonder who bought the Feature Checkout spot on that rack?

There was a decent amount of coverage in both fanzines and publishing related journals about her “takeover” of the newsstands.

Of course, we covered it at the Foredeck because we believe that not everything has to be all doomy and gloomy all the time.

So the question now is: Did Miley Ray Cyrus actually save the newsstand? Or at least the March issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine?

The answer is an unequivocal: Well, yeah…

I went old school and took a sampling of what I believe is about 45 – 50% of the Cosmo draw in the continental US.  Based on that limited data sample, I can report:

The March “Miley” issue sold about 7% more than the February issue within my sample, and:

The March “Miley” issue sold about 7.5% more than the January issue within my sample.

I’m sure the good people at Hearst already know the actual and more accurate results.

But there is a simple and obvious moral to the story:

Social media and an active fan base can help newsstand sales in certain instances. Since the “Hannah Montana” show ended, Miley Cyrus has been more famous for her hair styles and tattoos than her music and acting. That’s not a knock on her. She clearly knows how to manage her “brand” and public image and she does a good job at it. Despite the lack of TV, movie and music exposure she has 11.9 million Twitter fans and 26 million Facebook “Likes”. More importantly she  has people who will go out on their own time and do stuff for her. Like merchandise magazines. And buy them. You know, pay full, single copy price with US dollars for old fashioned media printed on wood pulp.

In other words, what Mr. Magazine(tm) calls magazines.

So imagine, even with a small niche magazine, what could happen if you merged an active fan base and a dedicated group a readers.

Spend some time on Twitter or Facebook and scroll through the postings of any bookstore (chain or indy) or major retailer. Or many magazine publishers for that matter. On the publisher side, other than a few callouts that this or that issue is on sale and this is what the cover looks like, how much single copy promoting (or subscription promoting) is going on? How about the obvious place to promote single copy sales? Bookstores?

Very little is going on. And I’ve never understand the reluctance. Are the social media and circulation silos still that hardened? How much effort or energy or even creativity does this take?

If you’re going to drop some serious promotional dollars on a special issue, why wouldn’t you make note of it on your social media feeds? At least more than once on a Wednesday at 4PM? And why wouldn’t you get with your retail partners to promote that?

If you are going to go through the time and energy to print hundreds of thousands of copies of your magazine, pay tens of thousands of dollars per issue to ship them, pay tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of dollars to pay for premium display space, why on earth would you simply leave it to accident and chance that your audience just might, maybe, perhaps, possibly walk by a magazine rack and suddenly have an urge to buy your product? Why would you limit your audience to only people who occasionally browse a magazine rack?

If anyone has some stories about their efforts with social media and single copy sales, please ping me and let me know what happened. I’d be happy to help you publicize your story.

The People’s Library was a completely free lending library set up by members of the Occupy Wall Street movement. At its peak, the Zucotti Park based outdoor library housed more than 5,500 volumes, had full-time volunteer librarians and a rather well-organized and extensive catalog.

Early in the morning of November 15, 2011, Mayor Bloomburg ordered the New York Police Department into Zucotti Park, the home of the Occupy Wall Street movement, with  instructions to remove the occupiers and clear out their encampment. With less than a 15 minute warning, there was little time for the librarians to organize an orderly break down of the collection. While Mayor Bloomburg announced that the entire library had been saved, it later became clear that he was either mis-informed, or lying. Most of the library was destroyed or rendered unreadable and numerous eyewitnesses reported seeing the New York Police deliberately destroying the collection.

On April 9th of this year it was announced that the city of New York agreed to pay $366, 700 in damages to various Occupy groups for the damages that resulted in the November 15th raid. The biggest award was to the People’s Library for damage to the books and for lawyer’s fees. There’s a downside to this happy ending. Not surprisingly the lawyers fees were higher than the award for damage to the physical books, computers and library equipment.

The People’s Library at it’s height. (Source: Businessinsider.com)

I’ve always maintained that you can determine the health of a community not by its retail base, public schools, houses of worship, or carefully maintained parks, but by the health of its public library. Is there one? Is prominent in the community? Is it well-funded and well maintained? Does it house a wide and varied collection? Is its mission to serve its community or be a bastion for the few who view reading as their own personal domain? Does it reach out to the community and welcome everyone? Does that outreach include both the well-heeled patron and the homeless person who sleeps in the park?

You can agree or disagree with the Occupy movement. The People’s Library represented the best of both volunteerism and the desire to spread reading to all. That is why I found their story so inspiring. The library still exists today and its volunteer librarians continue to bring crates of books to lend out around New York City. Hopefully this award will go towards advancing their mission.

Part of the library after the November 15 clear out. (Source: Village Voice)

Shrink is commonly considered to be copies that were stolen from the rack by the retailers customers or employees. It can also be copies that are damaged and unsalable. Sometimes copies simply disapear and can not be accounted for. Under more traditional sales terms with magazine wholesalers, if a retailers customers were engaged in poor behavior, too bad. Unreturned copies were considered to be sold and had to be paid for. Apparently under the new proposed terms of SBT that the News Group has presented, shrink will remain the responsibility of the stores. I think this is the right place for it to remain.

There are now more copies sold through SBT retailers than the traditional method of determining sales (deducting returns from deliveries). Therefore it seems apparent that once all of the calculations are figured out, every publisher, large or small, who uses the services of AAM auditing is going to take advantage of this.

This should be a benefit the three hundred or more titles that have their circulations audited.

For the rest of the print newsstand world, this may not mean all that much.

But this will: Last Friday, the IPDA (The International Periodical Distributors Association), released a link to an article that any publisher with single copy sales at an SBT participating wholesaler should pay close attention to.

IPDA is a trade organization comprised of national distributors and publishers. Their goal is to work with other participants in the supply channel of the single copy magazine and book sales industry. Throughout the year they provide a wealth of information and research relevant to the single copy sales world. They work behind the scenes with retailers promoting the sales of our category. You can subscribe for free to a daily news digest they put together outlining important details in the single copy sales, magazine publishing, and retailing industries. If you’re currently subscribing to the BoSacks newsletter, “The New Single Copy,” or Samir Husni’s blog, I would urge you to subscribe to the IPDA feed. The articles they glean will provide you with excellent balance and insight into many issues affecting our industry.

The article, by IPDA president Jerry Lynch, describes some important developments regarding SBT. In particular, it discusses the recent decision by AAM to allow for the reporting of shrink in single copy sales for audited titles and a list of “Best Practices” goals that IPDA suggests as the industry moves forward with the more universal deployment and acceptance of “Pay on Scan”.

Overall, the objectives are quite notable and make sense. They range from the goal to “Engage all parts of the suppy chain” to the recognition that “shrink and its casual factors must be identified…reported and mitigated over time.” Read the lists of goals. If we can make this work, we could see wholesalers return to some semblance of profitability. This would be a good thing because if wholesalers can be assured that their businesses are profitable, then we can all focus on selling magazines.

But as this process moves along, the questions on my mind, as a representative of smaller and medium sized magazine publishers, is two-fold:

1) Are the ultimate goals of these “Best Practices” the increased and expanded sales and marketing of magazines?

And,

2) If we know more quickly the final sales by store and chain and issue of these magazines, are we advancing forward the final payment for these magazines to all participants in the channel. Will this allow magazine publishers to share in a stabilized industry and focus on creating more publications we can sell?

At present the answer to question number 2 seems to be “No”. Two of the three major wholesalers recently requested a longer term to pay on less frequency titles (Quarterlies, bi-annuals and annuals) citing the difficulties in carrying the inventory costs associated with these longer on-sale magazines with their SBT retailers. I’ve also had discussions with wholesalers who cite slow payments from retailers as a major impediment to their long term profitability. 

I have no real problem with this technology. Quick access to sales data is very 21st century. It’s a necessary part of our work today. But the end result of this process has to be the sales of more magazines. It’s important for wholesalers to reduce their costs. They’ve been working at this since consolidation began back in the ’90′s. But you can only reduce costs so much. Now it’s time for them to be profitable. You can only do that by selling more product.

And that’s the same issue many publishers have. I recently took a call from one of my clients after posting an updated POS report to him. “I like getting this sales data so quickly,” he said. “Now why can’t I get paid more quickly too?” 

Why, indeed?

In the ’90′s we had the groundbreaking TV series “Sex and the City” following the life of columnist Carrie Bradshaw and her friends. Most of the stories focused on Carrie’s love life and her obsession with shoes. But we did get an occasional glimpse into the writing process. As the decade closed, actress Drew Barrymore gave us a somewhat laughable look at life at the Chicago Sun Times in “Never Been Kissed”, which was something like newspaper reporters meet “21 Jump Street”. But allegedly in a California version of Chicago instead of a Toronto version of Hollywood.

In the last decade, we saw a tidal wave of movies and TV shows taking on the publishing world. From 2006′s “The Devil Wears Prada” with Meryl Streep playing an Anna Wintour type editor to the “Confessions of a Shopaholic”,  with its pretend fashion and financial magazines. The English import, “Love, Actually” had a side story about life in an English magazine of undetermined editorial content.

This Friday, comedienne Tina Fey will star in the new movie “Admission” and in it there is apparently a scene that takes place in front of a magazine rack in a retail store (As I understand it, Tina is looking for parenting magazines). We’ll also see ever energetic and entertaining Wallace Shawn showing off a “US News & World Report College Guide”. I hate to tell Tina this, but the parenting category is very small on the newsstand. The chances of finding something in the real world would be pretty slim. Even in Barnes and Noble, parenting magazines don’t make up a big part of the category.

This Friday you can see this scene at the movies. Photo by David Lee, copyright by Focus Features.

All of this makes me wonder two things: How much longer will Hollywood’s romance with the print publishing world continue? And when it ends, will the romance shift to digital publishers? At some point, will we have a contemporary twist on “You’ve Got Mail!” ? In this version perhaps we would see a tycoon of the digital age put a plucky but cute cute and single single title publisher out of business because she doesn’t have an Android platform.

In the comments below, drop in your favorite TV show or movie that involved magazines, books or newspapers.