Hi All

Please be advised that Australian Tennis – January 2011 issue and Australian Tennis Poster Magazine on sale yesterday, have the same barcode and barcode extension but at different price points.

In order to minimise customer complaints the publisher has decided to decrease the RRP of the Poster Magazine to $7.50 to match the January issue of Australian Tennis cover price. This ensures that no customer is over or under charged for either magazine and also ensure that newsagents are not left out of pocket.

We also advise agents to produce their own Barcode stickers where possible for the Australian Tennis Poster Magazine and blank out the one printed on the cover.

We will send out a flyer to the affected agents.

Thank you

Daniel Tisi
Supply Chain Project Manager
Network Services (a division of ACP Magazines)
Level 21 Civic Tower | 66-68 Goulburn Street | SYDNEY NSW 2000
tel: +61 2 9282 8873 | fax: +61 2 9288 9136

A few people today asked is it possible to set to censure a magazine so that if a magazine comes which they are sure will not sell, they can mark. Then if the magazine comes again, they know not to process it.

We call this "Do not receive". You can either do it in stock maintenance and in stock received.

For example while receiving go edit. Mark the item where the red arrow is. From then on in our system, it will automatically instant return this item if received.

We have also asked and asked GG and NDC if we can email or send them this list to save everyone unnecessary handling but they just do not listen.

Due to last minute changes by publishers, we have had to amend the current information sheets already issued. These you should get today. If there is any problem receiving them, please let me know.

Because of these unscheduled last minute changes, we do suggest that you do the adjustments at the last-minute in this period as much can happen without forethought or planning.

Also please check that they have not been done by some else in the shop already as sometimes people do it and then some else does it. This can cause problems too.

Ancol 2011 Back to school promotion has been tested and it is fine.

It is available here. (Outdated file - decommissioned)

If you have any enquiries about this file please call

Kevin Mulhall
ANCOL (SA)
Telephone: (08) 8346 6415

The latest copy of the Artwrap stock catalogue has been put up on our website here...(Outdated file - decommissioned) It has been checked.

While processing some mistakes were discovered with the file such as many items had duplicate barcodes with different prices. Pack barcodes that were the same as item barcode. Items with margins that are clearly wrong. No categories. This sort of stuff should not be happening now days.

What is scary is that Artwrap is one of the best card companies with EDI.

Friday Holiday Bumper Issues of Fairfax will have Saturday's barcode, just like the Australian will have. This saves the newspaper publishers from having to get the price changes out to supermarkets, and they do not want to upset these people.

The newsagency industry will have to get used to it because it is likely to happen every long weekend.

Attached here is the communication from Fairfax.

Attached are details of The Age Bumper Issues this Christmas/New Year. Again, as is becoming normal for us with our Christmas and New Year bumpers, there is only a single book (no complications with A2) with all sections will be pre-inserted into the main news book. Essentially it is only a price change for the Friday editions (to Saturday pricing of $2.50).

There is no edition published on Christmas Day 25 December 2010.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

--
Sean Harrison
Circulation & Sales Strategy Manager
The Age

Dear Newsagents,

As you are aware Network Services have experienced some issues with their server over the last few business days. This has resulted in a large backlog of files requiring processing and delays in clearing this backlog.

In the interest of clearing the backlog of files, we ask that all agents take the following actions:

1) Hold off from submitting returns information for the next 24-48hours.

2) Agents who are yet to receive confirmations for forms already submitted should not ship their returns yet, please wait until the confirmation has been received.

Thanking you for your cooperation

- - - - - - - - - -

Dale Smith
Distribution Contact Centre Manager

Network Services (a division of ACP Magazines)
Level 21 Civic Tower | 66-68 Goulburn Street | SYDNEY NSW 2000
Tel: +61 2 8667 5248 fax: +61 2 9267 4363 mob: 0438 000 911

I had a discussion a few days ago with an officer from one of the major magazine distributors. He pointed out quite correctly I thought, that often newsagents do not take into account when a big advertising campaign is occurring with a particular magazine.

I stated that the problem is that newsagents are often not aware of this major advertising campaign for a publication sometimes because they rarely have time to see TV and often as it has not happened yet. As such newsagents are often taken completely by surprise, are unprepared and so much of the advertising is wasted.

What is required is some notification, for which XChangeIT would be useful to send a message that could be imported into the newsagent's computerised diary in his software. When the product arrives, our software would warn the person doing stock receiving that a major advertising campaign was about or was happening with this magazine.

Knowing this a newsagent could take better advantage of this mass market advertising and maximise their sales by properly displaying the product.

It would also be good if this note contained details on the product as many newsagents may want to display magazines of a similar subject matter next to it.

I predict in 2011, two huge computer companies will be fighting over the Australian market for ereaders - Google Android and Apple iPad.

Already it has generated much interest. Here is a chart of the Australian public searches last two years of the four top ereader systems in Australia iPad, Android, kindle and kobo.

As you can see interest in this sort of technology has dramatically increased. Expect this Christmas rush on them and next year a dramatic price fall as other companies like HP, HTC and Dell come with their Android products not to mention the cheaper Chinese and Indian products.

This must have an effect on traditional newsagency lines. So I do suggest that newsagents now look very carefully at their product lines, in particular, expansion in such lines like stationery, e.g. inkjet cartridges and technology products like phone rechargers. If you are interested in these sort of technologies, please contact us as our software can help you here considerably.

As word got around that on page 17, there was a voucher for a slab of Corona Beer for $29.99, a run started on yesterdays Age's.

Of course no newsagent was told about it, probably because there would not be many for the public if they had been told.

Apparently, it was reported that Dan Murphy shops just had queues of people with these vouchers.

If you have some copies left of yesterday's age you may want to let special people know about it, if they have not heard about it. The voucher's good until Sunday. It should be good in all states.

What it does show is that newspapers are good for advertising and can be very effective.

I had a discussion recently with one of the analysist in GG on oversupply.

What is not commonly realised is that magazine companies are not working to try to reduce your returns to zero. What they consider a perfect score is that you return one of each magazine issued. That shows them that you sold as many as you could. This philosophy causes problems to delivery newsagents who supply retail newsagents because to be able to do this, the delivery newsagents needs to be able to do is return one magazine from each subagent.

However, still I decided to play around with our latest software today with some AD HOC reporting to see what a magazine analysis from a distributor would think of the supply to a typical newsagent. So I took one newsagents database over a 12 month period and created the following table. The ideal figure is sold plus one for each delivery.

Sup.............Received......Sold.........Ideal
GG...............33484........16060........24140
NDC..............32892........17626........21387
RDS...............2416.........1099.........1678
----------------------------------------------------
Grand............68792........34785........47205

As you can see they are currently oversupplying about (68792/34785-1) x 100% = 97.8%

What ideally the magazine distributors would be aiming for an oversupply of (47205/34785-1) x 100% = 35.7%.

Based on this, we have plenty room for improvement.

September is the most dangerous month of the year for newsagencies, based on our figures from our CRM.

I am sure it has to do with GST and PAYE becoming due as the two peaks are when they are due. September would be particularly dangerous as the previous Christmas sales have been spent, new stock has been purchased and the new Christmas sales are not in yet. So many then are drained of cash.

From next year only about 50% of the News Corporation newspapers in Australia will be available free on the internet. For the rest, the reader will need to be a subscriber.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/11/19/3071691.htm

As many readers here will know, News Corporation has just released their Apple apps to the iPad. So today I went out and looked it over.

There are actually two apps, one is called pressReader that has the Herald-Sun and many other newspaper. The Herald-Sun was free. How long will it be free or many editions, I do not know but I am sure it is only temporary. However if it continues it maybe a big threat to newsagents. Here is what it looks like.

It contains all the newspaper, but is a lot of keystrokes to use. Messy to move around but other than that it is fine.

But this app is not the main one that News Corporation is pushing. For their app here are my thoughts on it which are very mixed.

Pros:

It is much cheaper than a printed newspaper.
News is available in real time.

Cons:

I think actually it is terrible app compared to other similar news sites. This is probably as a consequence of a rush to get it out. I expect this will soon be fixed.

The price is quite expensive for such an app, $8 a month. I can download several famous newspapers apps for free. There will be as such considerable consumer resistance to pay that much although a typical newsagent's client would find it quite cheap. So ironically the people best placed to sell this app cannot.

Furthermore, it does not contain much of what is in the printed newspaper, or even what is now on online.

It is also full of advertisements, almost a third of the newspaper. As a consumer, if I have to pay for it, I do not think it is right that I get bombed with so many advertisements.

Overall: I doubt many people in the near future will rush to this app as is as it still has much work to be done. Clearly it is based on Rupert Murdoch philosophy that the public will pay for online news. Something I doubt. But I suppose for my clients that is good news that he has such a view.

It is not going to be a printed newspaper killer yet.

I was interested in what the newspaper companies are saying about the current 3% drop reported in the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation on sale of newspapers. In perspective 2008, it was about 2% down on the previous year, last year in 2009 it was about 1% down.

This time with such a big drop, their main reason was.

The Newspaper Works CEO Tony Hale said that uncertain economic conditions, especially in the retail sector, had contributed to the decline in printed newspaper sales in the latest quarter,

.

You can read the full statement there.

One problem with this argument, I think is that retail sales are marginally up this quarter. In any case, if retail is their major concern now maybe they should talk to one of their largest retailers newsagents to find out more.

Update: A few people asked me what are my opinion for the next quarter. I predict for some of the smaller papers, a huge drop because the Audit Bureau of Circulations will probably change their rules because of the controversial deals for university students, teachers and sporting clubs. Some newspapers like Fairfax's Melbourne Age these may add up to 30% of total sales.

[link removed]

The Magazine Publishers of Australia (MPA) is to become a member of Publishers Australia (PA). Maybe, as a result, we will see some activity in the newsagency space as the MPA has been dead for years in our space.

The latest quarterly newspaper circulation figures are almost everywhere down according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations latest report. What makes it worse is that these figures include the elections.

Here is the current set of figures.

The last couple of days people have been ringing up about their XChangeIT not sending data.

The problem is XChangeIT is putting a / instead of a \ in the Unsent and Archive Paths. So what is stored is c:/programfiles/xchangeit/xml/archive. What it should be is c:\program files\

XChangeIT are aware of the problem but as yet are unable to determine how it happened and are trying to fix it now.

If you have a problem sending data, please call XChangeIT ASAP.

Yesterday we were looking at our CRM and its KPIs. The increase on last week support same day was 30% higher. That is a massive increase, it was high compared to the last year's Monday before the Melbourne Cup. We immediately started to investigate. Why today so many calls? Why are we getting hammered today? Our receptionist smiled and said XChangeIT again. Network returns are not working, everyone is ringing up.

Her attitude is not surprising it comes up every year in our annual survey, in our 2010 survey people nominated as the most problem item with their system.

Of course Murphy's law would say, a problem like this would have to occur on a busy day when people were ringing up because of the Melbourne cup day tomorrow.

Still this brings a situation that I hate. Valuable support resource being eaten up with problems which no-one can do much about while people who had problems that can be solved are being delayed because of poor communication. That is very bad business.

In view of how important XChangeIT has become in many shops, the present situation is just not good enough. We have news feeds built into our software in our software that allows us to communicate with all our users immediately. Others have recently introduced a similar service. So should XChangeIT. If there is a problem all users, newsagency groups, and we should be notified immediately though XChangeIT newsfeed with a message "Problem with ....., expected solution is in ...., in the meantime this work about ..... is available." Not through the current ad-hoc system.

Yesterday I was at a meeting of newsagent suppliers when some voiced concern over newsagencies future.

After the meeting, I went to our accounts department and asked them their thoughts. They strongly agreed. So I decide to check our CRM for our records. Here is what I found. Note the figure for 2010 is an estimate.

As you can see over the 10 years we have used the CRM, the numbers have gone up, but they are quite small. How many businesses sectors can quote figures as low as these? Still the increase over the past few years is certainly disturbing.

One trend I did see was that our DOS clients were more likely to fail then our windows software users.