Magazine covers definitely affect circulation. Here is the winner that Australia picked in 2010. Although it would not be one I would have picked, I can see that it would be very appealing to many.

If you want to see the other winners please click here.

We are aware that the current Brown Trout catalogue does not include the 'entertainment' titles. We should have an update with these titles included on our site in a few days.

The masthead of the West Australian’s Saturday paper will now be
The Weekend West.

This is to emphasis that it is being marketed as a weekend read.

Now there is an important election happening in VANA, which is probably the most important newsagency association outside of the ANF.

There are running for the top position two candidates with quite separate views on how VANA should be run.

One of these people, I know well as I have worked with him in the past is Trevor Mason. Trevor Mason runs an organisation First Advantage.

From my experience, Trevor Mason does know what he is talking about and puts his point out very well. In his view is that the newsagency industry needs a shake up because as he sees it about 1/3 of the newsagency industry is in real danger of disappearing soon and his solutions is a modern retail approach. This involves among other points a buying group, adequate stock control systems in the group, financial management and debt management, a product mix appropriate for newsagents, experienced work force, store layout and display of stock and adequate proximity to key markets.

Little of this can happen, unless VANA becomes more of a commercial entity. This may cause problems for members of the organisation that he sees as marginal. It will involve a change in VANA existing mission. It will also cause conflict with those that see VANA as a group and with several marketing groups that exist already in the newsagency place. It will also cause problems with existing suppliers, many of who would be extremely reluctant to get involved in such a reorganisation. Depending on your view this may be a necessary evil.

Although I do not know the other candidate Robert Wade, from what I have been told he has nothing against a modern approach to retailing but sees VANA as a group.

If you are a VANA member, I do advise you to vote as I do believe that this election could have major affect on your organisation.

Several people today reported some problems with receiving returns for GG and NET.

We have been speaking to XChangeIT about several sites today about this. Unfortunately, if they are not sent there is little we can do. If you are having this problem, please contact XChangeIT to have them resent the files.

NDD’s final monthly returns form #45 is due back to NDD before 15 October 2010.

There will be no further claims allowed after this time.

Yesterday many newsagents missed out on two minor festivals that they could have promoted particularly for lotto.

Many Australians are from central and Northern Europe many of these celebrate Oktoberfest. In 2009 about 30,000 people in Sydney and as many in Melbourne went to celebrate it. Queensland has a lot too of such people. These people are big spenders in lotto, and I am sure that an Oktoberfest syndicate in many newsagencies would have been a goer.

Similarly, it was 10/10/10. The astrologers stated that it was an extremely lucky day. Many must have believed as it was one of the busiest days of the year's wedding calendar with couples hoping the date 10/10/10 will bring them luck. Surely a syndicate to be brought on that day would have also been popular.

My idea is that a calendar, be put together by the ANF, who could assemble it with consultation with a few industry suppliers and distribute it to its members so that more of these dates would not be missed.

Using the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) data, the Newspaper works, the spokesman for almost all the newspaper industry in Australia have put out a current report.

What attracted me was one of the bottom lines that despite all the talk, newspaper sales in Australia have dropped by less than 1% over the last 10 years.

The report is available here.

One of the biggest problems in trying to predict sales of a magazine is how good the cover is for this issue. If the graphic artists make an interesting cover, the sales will go up. Yellow seems to be a particularly popular colour with the Australian public.

Here are the US magazine covers for 2010, picked by the public. It might give you some ideas for what the Australian public is looking for. I confess I would not be interested in the winner below. I just do not have time for much TV.

However, I thought these in the Best News & Business and the Most Delicious categories would have grabbed my attention.

For the full list click here.

[All images been removed here]

I think this story could be repeated in many Universities around Australia.

Readers here will know of the debate over the accusations that Fairfax have exaggerated their circulation. I think you will find this story by Mumbrella interesting. If you wish to comment or read the existing comments, click here.

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Yesterday afternoon, Mumbrella discovered thousands of unread copies of the SMH at the University of Sydney’s Wentworth Building.

Mumbrella understands that more than 3,500 copies a day of the paper are delivered to the university throughout the year, with a large number of those copies not being removed from their pallets until being taken away for recycling every Friday. It is not currently term time at the university, meaning there are few students around.

Mumbrella understands that around 500 copies of News Ltd’s The Australian, and a small number of The Daily Telegraph, also go to the site every day.

Although the Audit Bureau of Circulation allows for distribution of educational copies, the number being delivered to just that one site is greater than the number of educational copies on the SMH’s last audit.

However, a major issue for advertisers is that the ABC’s current definition of a paid sale includes subscribers who pay any amount for an annual subscription. Mumbrella understands that the number can be as low as $20, and no evidence is required that copies are collected from the newsagent.

The current audited Monday to Friday circulation of the Sydney Morning Herald is 207,013, with just 1.25% currently declared as educational sales.

The issue moved up the agenda after an internal Fairfax memo was leaked to Crikey regarding its Melbourne newspaper The Age. As part of a discussion about launching a separate education publication, the email warned colleagues:

“We would make the total volume of copies going through these channels a matter of public knowledge … we would effectively write down the value of advertising in weekday editions from 200,000 circulation to 160,000 circulation, causing a pretty hard sell for the advertising team.

“The flow-on effect would also affect the Sydney Morning Herald and probably every major masthead in Australia in a similar way — not so bad for your publication if you aren’t quite so reliant on advertising revenue (aka News Ltd) but a big problem for Fairfax.”

About three hours prior to publishing this story, Mumbrella invited Fairfax to comment, asking the following questions:

* Is it correct that roughly 3,500 copies of the SMH a day are being delivered to the University of Sydney?
* How many newspapers go to other similar educational institutions in NSW?
* Do those copies appear on the SMH’s audit? If so, do they appear as general paid sales or educational subscriptions?
* Is there a mechanism to assess whether they end up in the hands of readers? If so, what is that mechanism?
* As it is not currently term time why are those newspapers still being delivered?

At the time of posting, Fairfax had not formally responded.

There is no suggestion that Fairfax’s distribution of the SMH in this manner breaches the current ABC rules.

Update: a statement from Lloyd Whish-Wilson, chief executive, Sydney publishing for Fairfax Media says:

“Copies of The Sydney Morning Herald were mistakenly delivered to Sydney University this week. It is normal practice that deliveries of The Sydney Morning Herald to universities are reduced significantly during semester recess. This did not happen in this instance and, as a result, we are now examining our internal processes.

“Copies of The Sydney Morning Herald are delivered to universities as part of our Tertiary Card subscription program. Under the program, university students and staff pay for an annual subscription to The Sydney Morning Herald.”

Ronald Arthur Geyer passed away on September 25, 2010 aged 87. Over the years he built up a huge newsagency as Sunbury. At all the newsagency shows you could always see him. He was a nice person, and it was a pleasure to have him as a client.

Considering what has happened in Australia recently in the elections, it a fitting result that no-one won, and the two sides are getting ready to replay this Saturday. Still as a result of this draw, retailers are expecting that supporters will spend millions of dollars extra.

Since it is being replayed, it will be an interesting test to see whether the newspaper and magazine companies can get their distributions for newspaper and magazines much better this week.

Also I notice that several of our clients are not returning many of these publications just yet as people are still buying them as a mementos. On ebay, 2010 Grand Final Record are going for $15.00 plus $5.00 postage and 2010 AFL COLLINGWOOD 'SPIRIT OF 90' POSTER HERALD SUN the bidding has just started at $0.99 plus $4.55 postage.

For those that do their NDD online, the final weekly return's form has to be done before 24 September. It does not give you much time.

XChangeIT are investigating now why some network invoices have not been coming through. What we do know is that some invoices do appear to be missed.

Until it is rectified if you find such invoices you will need to invoice it in manually.

There is an interesting debate going on now over allegations that Fairfax may have overstated their audited sales figures.

The claim is that Fairfax may have exploited a ruling in the current audit system where many sales of newspapers to educational institutions maybe counted as regular subscriptions if they are distributed to an individual whose name and address is known. The result according to the allegations is that Fairfax have overstated their sales by 25%.

An example might be those Fairfax newspapers being essentially given away in universities.

Fairfax have denied this and claim that these allegations are absurd, misleading and wrong and made an interesting quote, I thought when they stated that

"The Age's subscriptions and audit practices are fully and totally within the Audit Bureau of Circulation rules,"

Interesting as no-one has claimed that Fairfax ever broke the Audit Bureau of Circulation rules.

The advertisers have asked that the Audit Bureau of Circulations investigate these allegations and they have stated that they want this loophole shut down.

It will be interesting to see what Fairfax's circulation is stated in the next round of ABC circulation figures.

As with so many other suppliers we always have to make a bigger effort in Queensland because unlike other states most newsagents in Queensland have to travel much further to come.

We are very excited as this year we really have some exciting new technology to show. Software has moved forward considerably this year.

Beside the ereaders options we also have many new reports that we are keen to show, one I think is a great report is the Dissection Companion Sales Report. It shows you what products sell with your main dissections. It is specially made for advertising, cross-promotions and product placement.

We also will have software experts special to help existing clients who require it.

So come over and get a feel of the latest smart newsagency software at this year's Queensland GNS Fair.

This campaign is now running on TV and radio in Victoria. I wonder why they advertised a bookshop and not a newsagency which is also local and sells their products.

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Part of what our software can do is it can provide detailed sales reports that can allow you to make changes to improve sales and so have better better inventory management.

These are typical sell thru percentage for magazines in newsagencies over the past few years. I selected one in the suburbs, one in a shopping centre and one in the country.

I suspect the reason that the shopping centre sell thru rates is better is partly because they decided to take more charge of the magazine supply and partly as much of the data magazine companies are using is from supermarkets, so the magazine companies are better at predicting sales for newsagencies in shopping centres.

Looking at the graph there is good and bad news. The bad news is that there is a disturbing trend in that magazine sell thru rates in the past few years, has gone down. The good news is as the shopping centre example shows, newsagents can by taking control do something about it.

If you are having problems with connect and Fairfax, please wait as it is having problems now.

The Fairfax does apologise for any inconvenience. They have told us that they hope to have it working soon.

I was doing a demonstration for a few newsagents today to show them how useful the new cheaper Android operating readers can be for such tasks as printing round cards.

Here is the cheaper Android ePad in the light. The round cards are very easy to read.

Now when I turn off the lights, they could still read the rounds. Not only does this save trees but also printing and paper costs. Just as important it can also be seen in the early morning. No more getting out of the car, putting the sheets in front of the headlights to read a round card. See the image below.

See how with my finger, I can move the page up and down.