January 21, 2008
Never buy a magazine from a news-stand
One of the things I am getting used to, having moved from the UK to the US, is that magazines are free on this side of the Atlantic.
Well, perhaps not free, but certainly very cheap. Magazines offer subscriptions at cheap rates in order to build circulations that they can guarantee to advertisers as the so-called "rate base". Buying magazines on news stands is a very poor financial move because it is so much cheaper to subscribe.
As an example, among the latest magazine offers I have received at home is one to get a year’s supply of Newsweek magazine for $20. That compares with the cover price for a year’s supply of $267 - a handy saving of 92 per cent.
Magazines make a cursory effort to persuade you that you are only getting this rate because you are a special person, but so many discounted offers fly around that this is not very convincing.
Nor, incidentally, was an offer I just received to renew my subscription to Fortune magazine for $65 and have a friend receive a "free" subscription at the same time. The letter from the publisher said this was because I was "one of our most valued customers".
Yes, but a quick search online reveals that Fortune is offering yearly subscriptions to all comers for $29.98 a year. In other words, I would be paying two subscriptions-worth, plus five dollars. If this is how they treat their valued customers, what do they do to the ones they don’t like?
Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, has written one or two revelatory posts on the arcane economics and deceptions of US magazine circulation departments on his Long Tail blog. One of them is here. His new book is to be about the economics of giving away things free, which is apposite.
The problem magazines face is that all this marketing and subsidising of subscriptions costs them a lot of money and it is often not covered by the increased amount they can charge advertisers. Indeed, one US magazine publisher told me that he regarded the entire business as virtually fraudulent.
So the trend in the magazine industry, which is as troubled as other forms of print media, is to "lower the rate base" - to cease sending out so many special offers and stop propping up the circulation to such an extent. Time is among the magazines to do so.
All in all, it was quite a surprise to receive a note from The New Yorker saying it had cut off delivery of the magazine because I had not renewed my subscription. I did not think magazines did that kind of thing. I had to write it a cheque for an exorbitant $49.95 for a year’s worth. I even had to pay for a stamp.
I suppose it means The New Yorker is doing OK - or at least better than Newsweek.
At least cheap or not the subscription system in the US works.I have been trying to get my subscription to the Economist delivered to our home address in Belgium since one year. I got an answer to my inquiries only once.They said they had the wrong address.Of course they had confused the credit card billing address with the delivery address.It has been months still no delivery. Our office in Brussels has a subscription to the FT,one can place bets on whether it will be delivered or not on any given day.Our home delivery subscription to the FT in 1996 was equally bad.This is my first year back in Belgium since 1996 after US, Canada and Asia, I can’t wait to leave.Europe has no idea of service.Even the FT website is much slower and poorly planned than NYT, WSJ and even the Turkish and Philippino papers I read on the net.And we have to pay for it.
Posted by: gul tan | January 21st, 2008 at 10:11 am | Report this commentJohn, we’re all in the same boat. If the FT weren’t keen on boosting numbers to make the overall picture look more attractive to advertisers, the paper wouldn’t be available free at practically every trade show I’ve ever been to.
I’ve been in B2B publishing for a decade and have reached the conclusion that there are no easy, cheap ways to build up a community of readers, only difficult expensive ways.
The best of them is to invest in the best possible editorial content you can offer and be patient while you wait for readers and advertisers to respond to sensible, sensitive offers to engage with you.
Too many publishing companies pressurise their sales teams into hitting a number that somebody made up at target-setting time. The result is a giant marketing extravaganza. It’s demeaning to us all.
Publishers should concentrate more effort and money on finding and training talented editorial people and let them do their work.
Posted by: Stephen Tierney | January 21st, 2008 at 1:06 pm | Report this commentWhat’s the point of subscribing to the Economist when the paper can be accessed on the web for free? Anyway, the content has deteriorated dramatically over the past year or so and it’s now not worth the bother; so much effort expended on an effortless reading experience that the end result can be summed up in one word: boring (dull will also do).
The FT is much better - the last bearer of the true traditions of British journalism (ie minimal American encroachment).
Posted by: RCS | January 21st, 2008 at 6:58 pm | Report this commentMr. Gapper:
Posted by: Stephen Haust | January 22nd, 2008 at 4:09 am | Report this commentTwenty bucks seems like a lot for Newsqueak considering I had it for nothing for a year and could get it again for nothing if I liked. FT too.
I’m getting FT for a year and I also can take a bet on whether it will arrive or not on any given day. It’s another wrinkle in the game and that’s airline miles. About a dozen times a year I get a letter with a long list of titles that I can “buy” with my accumulated airline miles. And for some reason I always seem to have plenty of “miles” in those letters though I’ve hardly flown anywhere in years and years and can’t even remember when I last used the “airline” that sends me that stuff.
Mr Haust
The game there, if I may be so bold, is that the magazine publishers will have a deal with the airline to help it sign up big-spending, far-travelled professional women and men, so that the publishers in turn can use those readers to sign up high-end advertisers.
As I said the other day, if only they would invest as much time, money and effort in improving their editorial content.
Posted by: Stephen Tierney | January 23rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm | Report this commentNo doubt Mr. Tierney is right on both counts. However, that leaves me as a sort of collateral damage as I fit none of the three criteria mentioned.
Posted by: Stephen Haust | January 24th, 2008 at 12:20 am | Report this comment