Mayans and Texans and RDA Consultants….

It is possible that once upon a time in the not too distant past, selling magazines from the newsstand was an easy thing. Maybe once upon a time in the world, everything was shiny, new, clean, smooth running. Maybe all businesses were local and savvy. Canny, but honest. Everyone was polite. All children were well scrubbed, happy and bright.

But all that must have ended the day I went to work full time.  A few days into my new job as a “Regional Sales Manager” for the former Capital Distributing Company, my trainer from Texas got up to take a bathroom break and left me sitting aimlessly at our work table trying to figure out the giant stack of carbon forms in front of me and wondering why properly filling them out would make a difference to anyone. One of the grand old timers of the crowded, very noisy and very, very busy Chas. Levy “Rep Room”, got up, walked around the maze of tables and came up to me. He leaned down and placed his forearms on the table in front of me.

“Let me ask you,” he said, a smile on his face, “What are you doing here?”

When you’re three weeks out of college, horribly homesick for the green hills of upstate New York, and only sure that you wanted to be “out there” somewhere, doing something other than going to grad school, you don’t have a handy or snappy answer.

“Learning the business, I guess” I replied with some hesitation. “You know, I think I told you I grew up in it.”

“Go do something else. This business isn’t like it used to be.  It’s no good anymore.” He rose and straightened his back.  “Smart guy like you should go get another job. Think about it.” He waved and weaved his way back through the maze of desks and tables to his spot.

My Texan came back from his break. He wore thick eyeglasses as a result of recent cataract surgery. He was one of those guys who didn’t let a thing like near blindness get in his way. He was always on the move, happy, quick with a comment on whatever was in front of him.

He sat down, adjusted his glasses on his nose, picked up his magnifying glass, and gestured at the stack of printouts that were in front of us.

“So,” he drawled, “Where are we?”

“Ummmm”, was all I could say.

Where are we is an excellent question for the first week of the second quarter of the year when everything is supposed to end (According to the Mayans).

Let’s fast forward ten years. By now I’ve worked for a national distributor, a publisher, a consulting firm. A few of the mid-sized national distributors have merged into larger companies. One of the most venerable distributors actually went out of business and that unprecedented event left many publishers scrambling. A month before my marriage, the consulting firm I work for shuts down. It is one of the first notable victims of the end result of the many leveraged buy outs of publishing companies. I strike out on my own.

One of the publisher representatives I worked with back then I named the “Sighing Man” because, well, he sighed a lot.

The “Sighing Man “ would  spend much of the day sitting at his spot at the tables, morosely picking his way through his printouts, commenting on the ineptitude the world in general of his company in particular and of course, what he saw as the ineptitude of the wholesaler who housed the representatives who worked there. Late one afternoon, he picked up the big bound stack of bulk sales reports, poked at the keys of the balky Windows equipped laptop his company supplied him, sighed heavily, and proclaimed to everyone in the room, “It just doesn’t get any better than this! Does it?”

“No,” we replied in unison.

All of this comes to mind as we pass that point in time where we can see patterns in the shadows. We may have a clue about how this no longer new year will pan out.

Leaving aside the advent of digital publications in more forms and types than we have fingers, there is no denying that the business is very different from when I started. Or even three years ago. Leveraged buy outs created bigger but more fragile publishing companies. Twenty years ago, even the most inept magazine wholesaler could earn a reasonable profit. Now the only family owned operations that survive remain in business because the family members and their employees work harder than any of their predecessors could ever have imagined. The three big national wholesalers struggle to be profitable and that struggle makes the newsstand distribution process even more fragile than the most heavily stressed national publishing house.

So what can be seen from the foredeck?

• Sales will be down, just not by incredibly horrible numbers.
• However, we will still be plagued by plenty of “The End is Nigh” articles and “What Does This Mean?” analyses and “What All Of Us Should Do” commentary. If you’re in client services, this means, “Brace for Impact”.
• Pass Through RDA is a boon to retailers. It can be helpful to wholesalers. It won’t open up the authorization process for publishers. It will hurt like hell if you’re an RDA consultant. If you’re a national distributor, I imagine it will hurt if you charge your clients for RDA auditing, and would make the audit process more complicated.
• Which could be a problem if you’re a publisher. But overall, Pass Through should be neutral at best.
• The Comag/News Group merger could sooth the troubled waters of the industry as described by more knowledgable people than me. However, I wonder, if more mergers occur, or if the channels “behave better” as is often described, who will advocate for the smaller publishers? Who will have the clout to correct the top heaviness of the larger publishers and distributors?
• There will still be plenty of new launches, re-launches, specials, annuals and all the rest hitting the racks this year. But the threshold of entry is getting very high, and we’re having a harder and harder time giving publishers a compelling reason to be on the racks.

Not because print is no longer compelling. The hour I spent last week wandering Around The World News in Manhattan proved that. However the process is so tangled, so difficult and so convoluted. The solution still isn’t smaller racks and fewer titles, it’s a more flexible system that does a better job of marketing, distribution and presentation.

If the Mayans are wrong, we’ll see if we figure that one out.

The Hunger Games: In Magazine Form

According to the New York Times, the launch of “The Hunger Games” in movie format broke records this weekend. The box office take was a logged in at $155 million. Clearly this is something that will be good for the book business in all of its formats.

If you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll know that I was at the premiere at midnight last Thursday with my faithful sci-fi/fantasy sidekick, “Younger Daughter.” We actually came across the series based on a recommendation from Stephen King in his Entertainment Weekly column. This inspired us to take the audio version of the first book with us on a road trip. From there, it was off to the bookstore for the first of the series and from then on, a waiting game while we traded the subsequent novels back and forth.

So what does the success of “The Hunger Games” mean for the magazine business? We have a long history of companion movie magazines and over the weekend I came across three while browsing a rack in a specialty supermarket near my home:

One example of a movie companion guide.

I found it interesting that the on-offs from the smaller publishers focused on the image of Katniss in her hunting garb and armed with her bow.

Of course, Us Magazine decided to play up the romance angle, just a little bit.

On the plus side, Us Magazine left Gale off of the cover. And while the book notes that after getting stung by a “tracker jacker” Katniss thinks that Peeta looks sparkly, no one in the movie glittered.

Will “The Hunger Games” specials add to the newsstands bottom line this year and help build sales? Good question. As always, it will depend on the quality of the magazines that are out there and what sort of distribution they get. I found these titles in one supermarket and a quick check of a nearby drugstore revealed a few more.

On the other hand, none were to be found at a local Barnes and Noble. Sell out? Or missed distribution opportunity? A good question. For the publishers sake (as well as the B&N newsstand department) let’s hope the former and that a reorder is on the way.

“TMB” (Temporary Magazine Blindness) Considered Untreatable By the CDC

News from the present: By Felix Chartae

Magazine doctors on staff at the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA have determined that the common disease known as “TMB” or Temporary Magazine Blindness has neither a known cause nor cure.

“We pretty much tell staffers to hunker down and deal with it,” said Dr. N. Felix Libro, Dr. Pub., a consultant to the federal disease agency.

“TMB” occurs whenever a magazine publisher walks by a newsstand and fails to see their publication on that rack. This disease is also known to strike magazine advertisers. The magazine is there, but both the publisher and the advertiser not only fail to see the magazine, but they will believe they are seeing large quantities of their competitors magazine on display.

“It’s a very unusual sort of blindness or hysteria that seems to affect only people who work in this industry,” said Dr. Libro. “We’re not sure of the cause or what we can do to alleviate their suffering.”

It’s the symptoms of “TMB” that have both publishing doctors and the staffs at many magazine publishing companies concerned.

“Oh, the rages that we have seen are quite destructive,” remarked Dr. Libro as he left a tony midtown Manhattan office where he had just treated several senior magazine executives and their key advertisers. “All of the data, all of the pictures, everything was right there in front of them and they simply could not see it. It made them very upset.”

“All we can really do is help them get through it. I usually prescribe a placebo and a Power Point or two. After awhile, they move onto other things,” he mused. “It’s sort of like chicken soup.”

The CDC has identified other symptoms of “TMB” including but not limited to: Anger, resentment, the firing of staff, the hiring of outsourcing consultants to replace staff. Circulation departments, in particular those now rare and endangered newsstand circulation staffs are reduced to cowering in filing cabinets during an outbreak of “TMB”. The disease can also be transmitted throughout certain portions of magazine staffs.  Dr. Libro has identified smugness in editorial staffs, extreme smugness in digital staffs, and surprisingly, flatulence and shortness of breath in the production staff.

Perhaps the most extreme case of “TMB” recorded in recent years was reported by this blog when the both the publisher and editor of the Eagle, CO based publishing company, Outside the Groove Media, failed to realize they were publishing print magazines for two years.

“I feel kind of silly about that now,” said Peter Westleigh, the publisher of Outside the Groove Media. “But I’m better, now. I only have a few relapses here and there.”

Peter Westleigh and Wendy Ashburnham of Outside The Groove Media discuss his occasional relapses of "TMB" with this reporter. (Source: in-this-economy.com)

“Yes,” sighed Wendy Ashburnham, Director of Audience Development at Outside the Groove, “He is usually pretty OK with things. But he still can’t seem to find our magazines at his local King Sooper.”

This reporter also contacted the drug manufacturer Astra Zeneca to see if they were working on a drug regime for this disease. The company responded that while they care, they can’t help.

Things Placed in Front of The Magazine Rack: Part 3 of….(The Down Under Edition)

One of my favorite apps on Twitter is Tweeps Map, a handy little add-on that will show you where on the globe your followers come from. You can imagine my pleasure and surprise to discover that almost 30% of my followers come from outside the US, with more than 8% of  them based in the UK and Ireland. Another 3% are from Australia.

For many years I’ve been a fan of foreign magazines. I particularly love the ones I see from Australia. The Australian Twitter followers most likely came from the interactions I have had promoting my client, Juxtapoz Magazine - a title that sells rather well on that continent.

As you’ve probably guessed, the previous two posts, “Things Placed in Front of The Magazine Rack” were highly tongue in cheek. Yes, I want retailers to stop cluttering their mainline and checkout displays.

Want a basketball hoop with your Rachel Ray?

However, I thought that my reach would only go only so far.

So my admiration and appreciation goes to our Aussie allies and in particular to Steve Sharman, the proprietor of Carrara Village News on Australia’s Gold Coast for his quick response and continued dedication to moving merchandise.

I received this message from him via Twitter Monday afternoon:

If you’re on Twitter and you want to know how an independent news agent in Australia gets things done, you can follow Cararra Village News @StevieSharman.

He’s also on Facebook. I urge you to “Like” his page: Carrara Village News and check out the eclectic and interesting magazines he features.

Now, any American based retailers who want to step up and follow this retailers lead?

Things Placed In Front of The Magazine Rack: Part 2 of…. (And One More Thing)

If I were a more fair minded person, I’d stop picking on this particular retailer. But this week, I was presented with a trifecta of bad. Perhaps even St. Thomas Aquinas would have had trouble holding back.

Hope you weren't counting on selling anything out of that tower.

Chocolate and magazines surely go together. But is this the best way?

Seriously? A buyer spent corporate money for green colored beach balls? And "they" write snarky editorials about the newsstand business?

I can be fair though. It’s my understanding that certain union rules keep the local wholesaler’s merchandiser from setting up the store. For those of us in the business who would then counter with, “Well, why doesn’t the route manager go in and work with the store merchandiser and manager”? Good question. My guess is that that has happened. Probably a few times.

In keeping with this week’s calendar, there’s only so much even St. Jude can do.

In other news:

I was hopeful last week that we were going to evade the latest round of ABC Audit reports with minimal breathless reporting on the certain demise of newsstand industry. Clearly, I had been spending too much time on the port side of the foredeck admiring the waves.

Audience Development Magazine published a column from former Ziff Davis VP of Circulation, Baird Davis that suggests that “the newsstand is nearing endangered species status”!

Still? Aren’t we dead yet?

Of course, this was picked up and distributed by Bo Sacks.

Davis does point out many disturbing trends in the latest round of ABC numbers. And it is helpful to have that staring at you in black and white. But for those of us who work on the front lines, it’s nothing new. We already knew, and the people we report to already know, and the people we work with in all avenues and all channels of the marketplace are aware.

Which doesn’t mean he shouldn’t or can’t report on what he reports on. It’s just that there’s little here that is new or helpful.

Like many people who have reported on it, Davis suggests that the recent purchase of Comag, the formerly joint national distribution venture of Hearst and Conde Nast by national magazine wholesaler, The News Group could be a positive thing. He and others have suggested that it may bridge the divides in our business and lead to better channel cooperation. Maybe between News Group and Comag. But I have yet to hear a serious explanation of how this will solve our industry problems.

Publisher’s consultant Linda Ruth, also an Audience Development Magazine columnist makes a more interesting and perhaps correct assertion that “on one level we have a massive paradigm shift here, on another it’s business as usual.”

The article wraps up with a call to our industry leaders, especially the largest publishers such as Conde Nast, Hearst, Time/Warner and others, to work together to solve the “dangerously viral” condition of the newsstand industry.

OK. How?

I must confess that I often make this clarion call myself. While I am alone in my office. With the dog out of earshot. And then I come to a “Full Stop”.

How do we get the major circulation directors of the major publishers into a room to decide the fate of a  multi billion dollar industry? Moreover, do they have the right to determine the fate for all of the participants in that industry? Can I be assured that the end result will be fair to the smaller, frequently still profitable players in the business?

“Full Stop”

On the other hand, please remove your chocolate bunny dump bin from Aisle 3. Thank you. Oh, and take those green beach balls with you too.

Things Placed In Front of The Magazine Rack: Part 1 of ….

There is an excellent interview with New Single Copy partner John Harrington in Media Life today and I strongly urge you to go and read it. In the interview, Harrington cites the  economy as a key factor in the continuing decline in newsstand sales that everyone and their uncle likes to write about. He also points out that aggressive subscription marketing, digital initiatives and a weak wholesaling environment contribute to the softness in sales.

In other words, as all of us who work in it know, it’s not just one thing.

Will the newsstand make a comeback as the economy improves? Harrington muses that it’s possible. But only if publishers and wholesalers and retailers make a combined effort to remind readers about the “excitement and value of magazines. Especially at retail.”

Check out the interview here.

During a side trip through a desktop folder this morning, I realized that I have collected a fair amount of evidence that suggests another reason for the decline in single copy sales. It isn’t too many titles in one category, heavily discounted subs, the shift to digital, or the digital side putting some sort of voodoo on the print side over at corporate.

It’s too much sh*t getting put in front of the magazine racks.

Item 1:

For your consideration....

Yes, tongue is firmly planted in the cheek as I write these lines. This topic does get covered regularly in this blog and seeing as how I have named this writing effort after a famously unsinkable ocean liner that ran into something and then sank, well….

“Things Placed In Front of The Magazine Rack” will now be a regular feature with regular updates. So pull out your cell phones, smart phones, iPads and Android tablets, snap away, and submit your best evidence of “Things Placed In Front of the Magazine Rack” to newsstandpromos at gmail.com.

If I get enough entries, I’ll name a lucky winner at the end of the year. Now how can you resist that?

Obsolescence Revisited

There’s a drawer in the hutch in our family room that contains eight different cell phones we’ve retired over the years. The plan is to donate them. But first I have to get around to recharging and reseting them to “factory restore”. The phones range in age from a much loved Nokia VGA candy bar to a entirely unmissed, unloved and happily retired  Windows Mobile phone.

Down in our basement are two old Windows XP towers that kind of work. Before I haul them off for recycling this month I need to strip their hard drives out. Lying on the floor next to them are two newer HP laptops with fried hard drives. What is it with Vista and fried hard drives? Hiding in a corner somewhere, is my very first desktop: An Epson Equity IIe. I wish I knew what happened to my first love: A Toshiba T1200 HD.

Where are you? The "luggable" Toshiba laptop. (Source: PC-Museum.com)

The genie is out of the bottle and we’re well on our way into the age of digital reading. eBooks, digital magazines, the merger, melding and colliding of how we used to read and how we got that content is already here. No, I don’t see any evidence that all bricks and mortar stores are going away. Nor do I think that print magazines are obsolete and will wind up like buggy whips and mens spats. But the world is very different. Sort of.

Is Flipboard or Editions the Reader’s Digest of the 21st Century? Does an eBook written by a “fan” and given away for free have the same value as the latest from Grisham or Picoult?

These musings started when I began cleaning out some drawers in my office last week. I came across an old CD of a “Sonic the Hedgehog” game that came with a long ago recycled Win95 machine that came home when the daughters were very young. We spent hours playing and mastering that game and kept at it right though updates to Win98 and 2000. When WinXP came along, we could no longer play the game. Even deeper in the drawer were a stack of 20 floppies that compiled the original “All in One” program, “Open Access IV”, that managed my business on the old Toshiba back in 1988. And below that, a cracked and brittle floppy drive from another much loved game, “D-Generation” from Mindscape.

One of the best computer games ever. Sonic CD (source: forums.macrumors.com)

Which got me thinking, of course. If all of these games and programs are long gone, what does this spell for digital books and magazines (and newspapers)? What happens when the iPad7 update is not backwards compatible? Will there be a time when app developers decide not to create something that works across platforms? What happens then if you’re on iOS, Android, Blackberry and whatever the latest incarnation of Windows Mobile  and the app you need isn’t available? What if a major e-retailer like Amazon went belly up and their cloud disappeared?

Interestingly enough, a few minutes on Google showed me what could be a slice of our future. You can still play the Sonic CD game and download it onto your computer. Moreover, it’s available on gaming platforms. Not surprisingly, I can also download the D-Generation game and make it work on my Mac via a handy little program called Boxer. If you ever struggled with with DOS commands or early versions of Win 3.1 or 95, you’ll appreciate the boxing gloves icon that loads onto your dock.

What am I getting at?

My original thought was that as we develop our technologies, a lot of things will be left behind. You could argue that there are many novels, newspapers, magazines and letters from earlier generations that have decayed into dust and are long gone. You’d be right. And much of what we’ve saved may never make it into digital libraries.

On the other hand, it took decades, perhaps hundreds of years for all that print to decay or simply get lost.

I learned in less than an hour that I can play some of the old games. Not everything gets lost or left behind. But there’s a lot of data from the ten years that I did manage to use on a DOS based “All in One” program (with a hell of a lot of ‘work arounds’) that, as far as I can tell, is lost, inaccessible, or at least, not easily accessed. How much more is gone, and gone for good?

Will this be the future of reading? Of viewing? Of listening?

The basic e-readers are pretty simple to use. But the goal of the manufacturer is to lock you into their store. How flexible is that? The newer tablets serve multiple purposes, which is cool. But it’s tech. It’s all about the tech.

At some point, that tech becomes obsolete. And then what?