Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeke
Most of those rags populated the news-stand mag rack. POP spontaneous buying would seem to me to be the main source of revenue but what do I know?
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Those magazines get their revenue from advertisers. The news stand business is brutal, with the publisher paying a "pocket fee" for space on the shelf and a premium for faced-out, front row positioning. The publisher pays to have the magazines shipped from the printer to the distributor and the distributor charges a re-ship fee to send it on to the retailer. Once the magazines are on the shelf the publisher only gets paid for the ones that are sold, and that is often 3 to 6 months after the off-sale date (that's the date they are pulled from the shelves).
We had a good distributor that estimated our sales and paid us on the on-sale date for half of the estimated sales. We got the rest 3-6 months later. We had one of the best sell-through percentages at 40-45%. Some magazines see 80-90% of the copies they ship end up in the shredder.
We had a different business model, relying on subscriptions for 90% of our income. We spent our money on promoting subscription sales rather than on ad sales staff and paper and ink that was just going to be shredded. Our retail magazines were only on very select newsstands where sell-through was high.
OK you are all probably bored to death by now....