Speaking of the Advertiser/Editorial Relationship...

I wonder, does everyone know why the magazines you see in airport newsstands are there? It doesn't happen by accident. Mostly, publishers are forced to pay a placement fee or "space contribution" to get their titles put out on sale at airports, especially in the newsstands inside the security checkpoints. That's why you see lots of big titles—and lots of magazines of the type that depend on newsstand sales for the lion's share of their circulation, such as fashion and womens' titles, and football, automobile, and sartorial titles for men. You won't see much in the way of smaller, poorer magazines for sale in airports—nor many produced by small independent publishers, either. That would include a fair number of hobbyist titles.

Photo: John Thorn

But here's a new twist. Asda, a big U.K. supermarket chain, seems to be taking this peculiar form of extortion a bit further. Not only is Asda demanding that magazine distributors pay £10,000 per title to sell magazines in its stores—and not only does it want £2,500 additional per title, per store for new stores as they're built—but it's demanding that it receive two pages of free ad space in each of the magazines it stocks as well!

That's a new one on me. I've heard of set-out fees, but I've never heard of venues actually taking over content. What's next? You will turn over all your profits to us, or your workers will starve. Buahahaha! Bastards.

Your friendly favorite magazine
For whatever good it will do, I might as well repeat something I wrote in an editorial once at Photo Techniques. If you want to support a particular magazine, do the following three things:

1. Don't buy on the newsstand—subscribe. Why? Because most smaller titles don't make much money on newsstand sales, if any. You pay more, but more of it goes to the sharks, or is eaten up in costs. For some, newsstand sales might even be an expense—a net loss.

2. Subscribe for two years at a time. Why? Many magazines are set up such that their promotion and circulation efforts more or less eat up the first year's profits. Where they finally make money on is renewals. Renewals are subscribers they don't have to spend money to find. So make their day—give 'em a renewal right off the bat.

3. Send in your payment with your subscription. Why? Because billing and dunning costs are a big expense for most publications. Save them the hassle—send 'em a check.

I know the common argument—people say they like to leaf through an issue to see if enough articles interest them before buying. Just try this simple little calculation: divide the cost of a year's subscription by the newsstand cover price. I recently subscribed to 12 issues of a favorite magazine for $10—and the newsstand cover price is $6.99. That means that if I buy more than one single issue every year (which I do), I'm better off subscribing. For most magazines your break-even number is somewhere between two and four issues. At that rate, it doesn't really matter if you're interested in two articles per issue, rather than five, in the eight to ten issues you're getting "for free" as it were. You're still ahead by subscribing.

What's particularly tragic from a publisher's point of view is that some people deliberately buy their favorite magazines on the newsstand in the mistaken belief that, because they pay more, the magazine benefits more. Granted, there are some magazines—fat, glossy fashion mags, for instance—that do most of their business from the newsstand, and they don't really care if you subscribe. Not so for most smaller, struggling hobbyist titles.

Oh, and another thing? Don't buy your magazines at the supermarket or the airport. How would you find out about them, then? Well, here's one last tip most people no longer know: most magazines are happy to send you a sample issue if you request it. It might not be the absolute latest issue, but it will be a recent one. Just write and ask.

_____________________

Mike (Thanks to Ailsa)

Featured Comment by Tony Boughen: "Mike, Asda may be a big UK supermarket chain, but it was taken over a few years ago and now advertises itself as 'Part of the Wal-Mart family.' So watch out, they might be trialling a form of corporate blood-sucking that will soon cross the pond!"

Mike replies: Oh, so they really are bastards, then. My condolences for my country infecting you with this particular plague of modern life.

Featured Comment by Thom Hogan: "A couple of things. First, Mike's viewpoint is from a smaller magazine viewpoint. Absolutely the small, independent magazines would prefer not to deal with newsstand circulation and all the issues that this brings up.

"However, from a large circulation magazine's viewpoint (remember, I worked for a company that was putting out millions of units a month) things actually work a bit differently. That $10 you pay a year for a magazine? That's actually a worse thing for the magazine than selling 30% of the magazines they place on the newsstand at $6.99. It has to do with the way ABC audits work, amongst other things. Basically, a magazine guarantees eyeballs to an advertiser. How those eyeballs are valued is dependent upon a lot of things, and the average price paid is one of the key differentiators in the big leagues. For instance, my magazine maintained an over $20 average for 9 issues, while one of my competitors was averaging less than $14 for 12 issues. Guess how that impacted ad rates?

"But newsstand sales do other things for magazines that are under-appreciated. One of the reasons I got the job at that company in the first place was that I could scan their covers and predict with a good deal of success how they'd do. Why is that important? Well, subscribers actually rarely give you feedback other than a blanket renew/no renew decision. Newsstand sales, if the person in charge of covers knows what they're doing, allow you to test assumptions about what does and doesn't attract readers. This, unfortunately, tends to get taken to the wrong extreme. Once someone finds something that ticks (Abs in a cover line on Mens Health, for example [no, I'm not kidding]), the magazine tends to repeat that over and over until it exhausts. The smart editor tests and probes with covers, and the percentage sell through tells them a lot.

"So it's not as simple as you might think.

"And since my name was used in a hypothetical question, I'll take it out of hypothetical. Yes, a magazine could certainly treat Nikon as thoroughly as I do. Indeed, we have some close at hand examples of why I say that: look no further than Photoshop User and the empire Scott Kelby made from and around that. With the right people making the right decisions, it could be done for any niche, including Nikon users."

Mike replies: Thanks Thom. It's true that I know very little about the business mechanics of putting out "millions a month." When I was in the category, though, no photography title was circulating in the millions. I think the best title was >500k, a couple were in the vicinity of 200k, and several strong ones were around 100k. We never made it as high as 50k. (Camera & Darkroom—the American one owned by Larry Flynt—had 16k subscribers when it went kerplooie.) I can tell you that none of our advertisers cared a whit for how much people were paying for the magazine! At least not that I knew of, and I was in all the meetings. In fact what they seemed to care most about was how many of those little reader service card requests they got, and that was already irrelevant even in my day. OTOH, our regular subscription rate was $20 for six issues, so maybe that counted in our favor, somehow.

I do have a few funny stories about cover testing. One I've told  many times in talks and probably here too, so I apologize in advance to anyone who might have heard me tell it before. At one point the company hired a very well-paid "cover consultant" to help us at the newsstand. His services consisted of calling me once a month to bend my ear for 45 minutes with the same wisdom he'd imparted to me the month before, and providing a critique  of every cover we actually put out.

After several issues' worth of rather tepid reviews from this fellow, I did a cover that pretty much went against everything he was telling me. (I do have a bit of a passive-aggressive streak, I'll admit.) It was a subject that no one would think was pretty—it was a picture by John Barnier of a cow skull, shot from the underside so that it looked vaguely like a face with eyes, to illustrate an article about the great English alt-process expert Michael Ware. There was only one color on the cover, and it was mainly dark; and the main blurb ran in the middle of the page. It said "The New Cyanotype" in a horrid faux-Goth face that still makes me chuckle under my breath when I look at it.

As you might imagine, the cover consultant went ballistic. He wrote a scathing, two-page letter to the publisher saying every nasty thing he could think of about my Cyanotype cover and calling me every sort of name. I think he even suggested I be fired!

In his usual gentle, soft-spoken way (he really was—is—a nice guy), the publisher had a long talk with me about his "concerns." So a couple of issues after that, I decided to put our consultant's ideas to the test. We commissioned a custom cover, a picture of professional model with a fair amount of skin showing, shot by a guy who had 750 magazine covers to his credit. He even used a wind machine(!). White background, just like the consultant said was sure-fire. Blurbs in solid colors, all  on the left-hand side, according to the formula. (Sorry about the poor JPEG, but you can kinda get the idea.)

The consultant loved it. Praised it to the heavens, and closed by allowing as how there might be hope for me yet!

Well, you can probably guess the upshot. (Or else why would I be telling this story at all?) When the numbers came in, my cyanotype cover out-pulled the windblown-model cover on the newsstand. Pretty simple, actually: it appealed more to the darkroom workers who were the magazine's main audience. Our pretty model couldn't compete with the hundreds of prettier models on all the fashion, lifestyle, and womens' magazines; I'm quite sure it got lost in the store racks (and if it didn't, probably looked a little threadbare by comparison). But a darkroom guy would see that cool cow skull and go, oh boy, cyanotypes.

Oh, and Thom, if you ever want to make some real money without working too hard, you really should consider hiring yourself out as a cover consultant. I'm still amazed at how much that guy charged us!

Comments

[Aaron]

I'm only familiar with some of the photo magazines that are usually found in supermarkets or big stores. Those titles usually are just a bunch of articles about gear.

Any recommendations of good magazine reading that isn't quite so equipment focused? Bonus points if a subscription isn't too pricey.

[Carl Leonardi]

Mike, I get as many as I can on "Zinio Reader." All ads go right to the web site if I'm interested in some product. The price is right and I don't have to take them to the dump as land fill (recycle) and it saves on ink and trees.

On a big screen they're easy to read and you can magnify the page. The photos come out great, much better than the printed page. You can carry 100s of mags on your laptop for future reading or reference. If it wasn't for your blog, I wouldn't get to see all the great photos you post from time to time. Wave of the future.

Thanks, Carl

[Drayke Larson]

@Aaron:

I highly recommend Black and White Magazine

http://www.bandwmag.com/

and Rangefinder

http://www.rangefindermag.com/index2.tml

The former is a great example of little fluff and lots of great b&w photography, and the latter is more focused on photographers and the story of their work/success. I look forward to each issue.

Rangefinder also has a companion magazine called Aftercapture that I'm enjoying as well. AC focuses on different post-production techniques with a heavy emphasis on Photoshop techniques.

[Carl Leonardi]

Mike, One other point about Zinio, if the photo is a two page spread, half of it isn't in the gutter.
Thanks, Carl

[Philip Coulson]

Your comments about subscribing don't apply in all countries, particularly the UK given you mention ASDA. The US enjoys special postal rates for printed materials and newspapers. In the UK, there are no concessions and magazines are charged at full postal rates based on weight and size, which is why UK magazine subscriptions are sometimes more than the cost of the equivalent newstand prices.

[Mike]

Mike

I'm afraid that we're sending you tesco - who are easily a match for Walmart in the corporate plague stakes.

Mike

[Paul Mc Cann]

A local chain of stores (Dunnes) recently tried to extort better terms from the Guardian and Observer newspapers. Better than anyone else in Ireland that is. They were told to get stuffed, or words to that effect.

Anyway I buy very few magazines now since the advent of the internet.

[Peter Mellis]

Your comments about the economics of newsstand/subscription sales are dead on. One more point: unless something has changed since I was involved in magazine publishing, a subscription can be canceled at any time and the publisher must give you a refund for the undelivered copies. Not much risk involved in trying out a subscription to a periodical that you find interesting.

[Dibutil Ftalat]

Speaking of magazines. I think it's time to start giving revues to some in the same manner as you do books. Not all journals could be found on the local newsstands, not all are distributed like that. (And photo-related section in the community library is worse than a joke.) Finding the right literature is a big problem... And subscription links via your site could be another way to support this site!

[Christopher Perez]

For anyone looking for an image-centric photographic arts magazine, try Lenswork - http://www.lenswork.com/

Their subscription rates tend to be higher than other publications. You don't get any advertising either. Just great photos and interesting essays on the art and craft of image making.

[John Friar]

Mike, Another aspect regarding magazine sales through an outlet is the massive waste that results. The magazines that are not sold are destroyed (the majority, from what I understand).

One excellent magazine (Lenswork) has recently moved to a primarily subscription only model for both economic and environmental reasons. A move that I support through continued subscription.

[John Camp]

The problem with most magazines is that they have to appeal to a general audience, and people don't have general gear or (usually) general interests. Their specific gear and specific interests are so thoroughly treated in narrow-focus web blogs (where you can sometimes talk to the actual developers of such software as Photoshop) that magazines seem redundant. What magazine could possibly treat Nikon as thoroughly as Thom Hogan, or the Nikonians web, or Moose Peterson, or Bjorn Rorslett? The same is true for Canonites, Pentaxians, Liecawegians, and so on -- or sports shooters, landscape artists, wildlife guys, or whatever. It's a hard pill to swallow for an old magazine guy, but hey, I'm an old newspaper guy, and I'm watching newspapers all over the country getting hurt, and actually failing.

The model for the new magazine is like those called "Fabulous Estates," or whatever, and which are actually 200 full-color pages of estates for sale. In other words, the reader is *paying* to look at ads.

JC

[Imants]

Most Photoshop magazines are rehashed tutorial sites from the net .......... a great money earner and a way to relieve the punter from a sizeable sum

[Hudson]

Asda is just trying to profit from magazines the same way they profit from the rest of the items they sell, grocery stores sell their shelves by the inch to the food industry, and even make them stock the shelves themselves.

OT: Ever notice that Coke and Pepsi products are never on sale at the same time, but one of them is always on sale, you think this happens by chance.

[Christer Almqvist]

I was very pleased when wal-mart discontinued trading in germany about two years ago. their way of trading never got accepted there.

[Ron]

Regards to lenswork, I believe it is no longer being sent to newstands or stores like Barnes & Noble, but is still being carried by some camera stores and available by subscription. It really is a marvelous publication edition. www.lenswork.com.

[Janne]

I wonder is this placement system isn't different in Japan. Here, even fairly small book shops and newsstands carry an excessive amount of very (very!) specialist magazines. Yes, the population is fairly large and hobbies of all kinds is a big interest, but still - could there be room for not one, not two, but three stationery collector magazines if they had to pay those kinds of fees to get onto the shelves? Magazine racks are reused heavily here of course; you might have a burst of photography magazines one week, to be replaced by a torrent of mobile phone magazines the next. It almost seems publication of any one subject is coordinated, and rotated in and out every month.

But mostly I never look at magazines any more. The net is just so much timely and informative than most magazines I used to read that I've given up on them. I do read one or two Japanese photo magazines now and then; the print quality is high enough to justify buying them just for the images, and they manage a kind of quirky, obsessive-compulsive bubbly enthusiasm in their gear articles ("lenscaps - a history"; that sort of thing) that is just plain fun to read. The vast majority of magazines just don't reach that kind of level though.

[Peter in Bangkok]

So what should I do when I pay for a subscription and dont get anything from the publisher? As it did happen to me.

[Mike J.]

Peter,
Then you call the subscription department and tell them you're not getting your magazines. (And, probably, try to figure out which one of your neighbors is stealing your mail.)

Mike J.

[Marco Venturini Autieri]

Although I despise ASDA and its practices (especially for selecting food so low-quality that is toxic, but also for the magazine issue), I must say that I do not like to subscribe. True, you save money, but you end up by buying more issues that are not very interesting for you, and this means MORE WASTED PAPER.
So I prefer to pay only for those (few) issues that I like.
Cheers
Marco

[Peter in Bangkok]

I did communicate with the subsript. dept a few times but somehow did not lead anywhere.

This was an e-publication, so my neighbour was not guilty, this time.

[Craig]

Wow - that is incredible...Some more on this from the Guardian here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/29/pressandpublishing1?gusrc=rss&feed=media

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/29/pressandpublishing2

Also, may I second the recommendation for Black & White Photography magazine - I'm in my second year of subscription now!

Craig

[Stuart Grimshaw]

It's even worse than this Quotes from (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/29/pressandpublishing1 ),

"The supermarket company is also demanding that any new title distributed in its stores will be subject to an "item set up" charge of £2,464."

"According to the email memo, the supermarket is also requesting that a turnover bonus to the value of 2% of its magazine suppliers' total business with Asda be paid quarterly to the supermarket and backdated to January 1 2008."

"In addition to these charges Asda is also seeking a "hurdle rate" for new titles carried in stores, so if sales of the magazines are 20% less than forecast the supermarket will be compensated with the difference."

The Guardian has some comments from magazine publishers, you can guess the tone of those comments without me posting more of them ...

[Manish]

Why does it take 4-6 weeks for the magazine to arrive at your doorstep once you subscribe?

[Mike J.]

"Why does it take 4-6 weeks for the magazine to arrive at your doorstep once you subscribe?"

Because they don't want to risk starting your subscription with an issue you might already have bought. That elicits loud & persistent complaints.

Mike J.

[Dave Sailer]

Cover vs. Cover:

I remember the skull. I didn't remember the typeface but seeing it again reminds me that it works. It's kinky and curly and odd and intriguing. Maybe worth investigating, hmm?. Like the blue skull.

I remember the woman, now that I've looked three or four times. Sort of. More portrait stuff, printing papers, etc. Whatever it was.

Check out a landscape gardening magazine, then see some work by Andy Goldsworthy.

There is noise. Here is wonder.

From 37Signals' book "Getting Real":

"Hire the Right Customers.

"Find the core market for your application and focus solely on them.

"The customer is not always right. The truth is you have to sort out who's right and who's wrong for your app."

And...

"If you try to please everyone, you won't please anyone.

"By narrowing our market... we made it more likely to attract passionate customers who, in turn, would evangelize the product. Know who your app is really intended for and focus on pleasing them."

And...

"What's the Big Idea?

"Explicitly define the one-point vision for your app.

"What does your app stand for? What's it really all about? Before you start designing or coding anything you need to know the purpose of your product — the vision. Think big. Why does it exist? What makes it different than other similar products?

"This vision will guide your decisions and keep you on a consistent path. Whenever there's a sticking point, ask, 'Are we staying true to the vision?'"

The good doesn't always last. It's worth paying more for it but too easy to pay lots for crap. And wake up too late. But quality will always arise again. We hope.

Getting Real: http://gettingreal.37signals.com/

Andy Goldsworthy Rivers and Tides clip on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TWBSMc47bw

Andy Goldsworthy From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Goldsworthy

[Jona]

Mike, your story of the over-priced consultant (that's redundant) reminded me of this poster:

http://www.despair.com/consulting.html

[Steve]

I subscribe to several small-to-medium size magazines. Here's some tips to save them money:

1. Don't send me 10 different re-subscription letters. If I like the mag, I'll resubscribe. If not, I won't.

2. Don't start sending me re-sub letters 18 months before my two year subscription runs out. All this does is annoy me and get me in the habit of throwing away your letters. Send me one just two or three months before the subscription ends.

[Bryce Lee]

Living in Canada one finds that often
foreign (including US magazines) often are
more expensive in every way. Our postage costs are really quite high, there is no longer a special magazine rate for mailings and one would assume the Canadian dollar is still not
on par with other world currencies. Then too there is the matter of actual delivery. It irks me no end to see a magazine with which I have a subscription appear on the local new stand often eight weeks before the same
magazine with the same cover date appears in my home mail slot. And what's often worse the magazine was mailed in Canada either in
Windsor or in Niagara Falls Ontario, both
of which act as postal return addresses for numerous US publications!

Then too have found magazines often rehash
what has been printed years prior; sure for photo magazines things are a bit different but not that much different! Then too for my other hobbies, the internet suffices for most things.

I am at an age where enough paper comes trickling in the postal slot as it is what with postal junk mail and similar. I have
stopped receiving newspapers, again if any
news is really important I can always find it on the internet. Unless happenings in the
world directly affect me, I'll find out
eventually. When you're over sixty and
things change, not much else is going to
happen to you that is earth shattering.

Cameras will still record images, wheels on
transportation devices will still turn, boats will continue to float and aeroplanes will
continue to fly. And political people
will still talk in fairy tale
wordings "Once upon a time..."

[John McLaughlin]

Re subscriptions and UK magazines. For some bizarre reason the majority of UK magazines work out more expensive to subscribe to for non UK Europeans than buying them in a newsagent. More bizarrely again, you pay less if you live in the "Rest of the world" and can pay in US$, so if I were to live in Outer Mongolia, my sub rates would be worthwhile, but not in Ireland!

At this point, and with more relevance for where we're at, I must point out notable exceptions to this dumbness: "B&W Photography", "Outdoor Photography", and "Amateur Photography" all have sensible European sub rates, and are therefore all duly subscribed to.

John