Magazine Tips
Single Copy Sales Can Work for You
by Linda Ruth
While working to improve your single copy sales can admittedly be frustrating at times, with its unpredictable swings and random changes, causing a publisher to think longingly of the more orderly arena of subscriptions marketing, it is possible to make single copy sales work for you. There are a number of benefits to single copy sales that should be remembered when planning and allocating resources.
1. Your Newsstand Circulation Adds a Revenue Stream.
While to some publishers the newsstand line might look like a loss rather than a gain, taking into account all the costs involved, still that check that comes in from your distributor is an important one. With the elimination of newsstand your costs might not all be eliminated, but that important revenue source would be.
2. Your Newsstand Circulation Adds Readers to Your Rate Base.
While the number of readers may vary from issue to issue, the average number of readers per issue per year can be considered a subscriber unit, and accounted for in that way. Reaching rate base through incremental subscriptions added might be more predictable but it will often be considerably more expensive than maintaining your base of newsstand readers.
3. Your Newsstand Circulation Provides a Vital, Inexpensive Source of New Subscribers.
For many publishers, in fact, newsstand is their best subscriber source, and for some publishers, it is their only source. Because the readers who respond to your insert cards have seen the magazine, they have bought it and read it, and now they want every issue, they are often your best and most loyal reader base; they are also, for the same reason, often more likely to renew.
4. Your Newsstand Reader is More Likely to Respond to Advertising.
This is for the reason described above--this reader responded to your product, not to a description of the product in a mail piece--and is therefore more likely to read it through. Furthermore, for many specialty publishers the reader who picks up the magazine on the newsstand often does so because they are looking for products advertised in the issue, often because they are doing some comparative shopping or are ready to make a purchase. For this reason,
5. Advertisers Like to See Your Product on the Newsstands.
Your newsstand circulation, and in particular the circulation in airports, bookstores, and specialty stores, is important to your advertising base, and it is important for them, when they are advertising in an issue, to see that issue on the newsstand. Your newsstand presence can to some extent be seen as a promotion to your advertising community.
6. Your Newsstand Readers Will Provide a Quick Response to Each Issue.
While it might take some time to survey subscribers to determine the response to a cover or a feature, by watching your scan sales and your returns flow you can determine very quickly how your readers are evaluating your cover and the individual editorial offerings of a particular issue. It enables you to react more quickly and make relevant changes to upcoming issues.
7. The Newsstand Provides an Arena for Regular Testing of Cover Images and Cover Lines.
This is an opportunity no publisher should miss out on. (For more information on cover testing, or to set up a testing program for your publications, send request to info@PublishersTotalSales.com).