Keep Talking

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 1, 2004

Byline: GEOFFREY C. LEWIS Editorial Director glewis@primediabusiness.com

By the time you read this, the Magazine Publishers of America's annual retail conference will be history. One of the top events on the industry calendar, the MPA gathering is where publishers get together to moan about the sorry state of the newsstand. This year, the leaders of the MPA (including chairman of the board Tom Ryder, CEO of Reader's Digest) are unveiling yet another effort to convince magazine retailers that they really should do better by the publishing business.

The gist of the campaign is to persuade grocery-store chains, drug stores and (increasingly) big-box discounters that magazines are a terrific merchandising category. Not only are magazines popular in their own right, they encourage consumers to purchase other goods.

There's nothing wrong with the idea. Certainly it can't hurt. But the chances that retailers will be schmoozed into helping magazine publishers seem remote; the MPA has been presenting data about how great magazine buyers are for a few years now, proving that they purchase more merchandise in the grocery store than other consumers. Yet magazine sales continue to decline at all newsstands and the chains continue to grab every advantage they can when it comes to negotiating distribution deals. Grocers certainly like the margins on magazines - getting 28 percent or 30 percent on a product that you don't even have to buy is not a bad deal. But retailers are focused on dollars per square foot and they are relatively indifferent as to whether they get them with Twinkies or sneakers or People.

Newsstand, of course, is a serious issue. Sales continue to drop, and for many magazines, efficiency is so low that there is a real question as to why their publishers should bother with the expense of retail distribution. On the other hand, there are some magazines that have maintained high levels of sell-through and others that continue to make gains with retail buyers, even as they raise newsstand prices (see story, p. 20). These exceptions to the otherwise grim readings from the retail channel are instructive. The lesson seems to be that great products, with strong brands and high quality content that readers are happy to pay for can succeed: Readers will find these products, even without special displays or merchandising tricks. (The caveat is that magazines that have not yet built a strong rapport with the public have little chance of doing so on the newsstand.)

On a different note, we'd like to point out two contributors who appear in this issue of Folio:. They are both old friends of the franchise, who have not been in our pages lately. The first, Samir Husni, known to millions as "Mr. Magazine," returned as a contributor in the February issue and in March and April has supplied us with his great data and insight into the dicey (but necessary) process of launching new magazines. (Yes, as the newsstand story points out, we have too many magazines vying for the attention of readers. But they are not necessarily the right magazines; the uptick in the rate of new launches is, in fact, an indication of the future vitality of the industry). Our second returnee is Jim Kobak, who wrote the book on launches, How to Start a Magazine. Jim has spent more than 50 years advising publishers about how to position new magazines and, for many of those years, had a close association with Folio:. His insights are still a valuable addition.

Finally, a heads-up: As we move into the spring awards season (the Neals in March, the ASME awards in May, the ASBPE prizes in June), the machinery for the Folio: awards begins grinding away. Please visit our newly redesigned Website (www.foliomag.com) for details on how to enter the Eddie Awards for editorial excellence and the Ozzies for design. While you're there, please take a look at our long-overdue online makeover. We hope you like it. Let us know.