There have been some last minute changes so a new edition of the notes for handling the Age newspaper over the Easter break was written by Garth. All our clients should have it now.

The DOS version I have written and sent out.

(Outdated file - decommissioned)

Although we have several unanswered questions from the publishers, we cannot wait longer. So we have written information sheets with some flexibility for managing newspapers deliveries over the coming Easter period.

Information sheets are being emailed out. Updates will be made available on our website here. (Outdated file - decommissioned)

There was an article in this month National Newsagent on page 38 Complying with XChangeIT, which I really objected. So, I spoke to the editor of the magazine Carolyn Doherty, a writer whose ability I greatly admire.

I did not like the comments on XchangeIT and the other problem was the comparison listed of POS Solutions.

The new XchangeIT is a great step forward and we as a company have been right behind it from the start. Recently, we just finished a campaign to get people to use it correctly. Monthly we run training courses on how to maximise the use of XchangeIT. As computerised magazine control can make a dramatic difference, so it is one of our most popular courses. However, as so often when we go two-steps forward we often go a step back. There are some issues with XchangeIT that need to be addressed such as it loss of files and the question of why are the magazine publishers are still not getting the information in real time? In response, Carolyn told me that she intends to write a follow-up article.

The other issue was the comparison figures for POS Solutions. She offered to allow me to publish in the next month's edition our figures. I declined for reasons I suspect most readers, here would know which she understood. What I stated to her was that I would appreciate the following statement to be issued in response to the next edition.

In accordance to company policy, I will not comment on the figure for any other systems quoted, but I can assure you the figure for POS Solutions is far below what we have.

I also challenge this comment "verified by data from competitors", to the best of my knowledge, no-one has asked us to verify anything.

If you have subagent, you can put credit terms and credit limit on their accounts.

Once set, the credit terms for each subagent will be checked when you end the week, and any subagents that have exceeded their terms or credit limit they will automatically be stopped.

Regards

Garth

On Sunday, I was asked about the magazine supply reports. While answering it, I thought if one person needs to know maybe more do, so I asked Garth to help.

The Supply reports are one of the most valuable reports you can run for your newsagency. Using it, you can cull many titles from your shelf that do not sell!

Newsagents using it have stated that if you reduce your non-selling magazines, and “spread out” your selling magazines more, you can increase your magazine turnover by up to 18%!!

Read more here.  (Outdated file - decommissioned)

Regards

Garth

Postcarden have a new greeting cards, when they come to Australia will be an interesting seller.

What the recipients do is unfold them, dampen the paper and put the seeds provided. In a few days, a Postcarden grows.

Check it out here.

{Link removed}

In fact they picked up every award

Winners of the VANA awards

Congratulations to all of them from POS Solutions.

Retail Newsagent of the Year
Nextra Sunbury Newsagency

Distribution Agent of the Year

Local Delivery

Employee of the Year:
Matt Rice from Clayton Newsagency

Also two other POS Solutions clients were honoured as life members of VANA

Ron Geyer (Nextra Sunbury Newsagency) and Rick Richards (Clayton Newsagency)

[Images removed]

A bit of good news, both newspapers have decided to use the same delivery fee as the SMH. That will make life a bit easier.

It works out to about an eight percent increase in delivery fees.

Details here.

There seems to be some confusion on delivery fees. As the financial is a national paper, so there is no increase for delivery fees because NSW got a delivery increase. It remains at 13 cents.

It is actually a problem with the current system that the ANF should be allowed by the ACCC to negotiate on national newspapers just like they do on magazines.

[link removed]

As you can see, newspaper sales in Australia, contrary to many cynics, are only slightly down.

Considering how little room they take, the decent margins supplied and how many people they bring into the shop, they are still a very good product to news agencies. It is when newspapers have to be delivered that problems arise.

[link removed]

We had a run-in with the Fair Work Ombudsman too recently. I do not see them acting *Fair*.

This case is over an employee who was allegedly paid a flat hourly rate of $18 for all hours worked - but was entitled to up to $21 an hour on weekdays and Saturdays and up to $33 an hour on Sundays.

The newsagent refused to pay $4,697 in back wages suggests that they dispute this.

Now the newsagency is looking at five charges each potentially worth about $40,000 ($33,000 from the newsagency and $6,000 by the owner) and the $4,697 in wages.

I hate to think what the final bill could be. The lawyers demand their money up-front.

As a punt, for this case, the lawyers will want about $28,000 from each side. Assuming costs awarded, the loser will probably be up for about $45,000 of legal fees and interest as the winner rarely gets everything. This assumes that it ends here, and it does not appeal.

Even if the newsagency win, they could be up for much of their $28,000 legal fees as, based on what I have seen, the government will often make an offer halfway through the case to drop it in exchange for no costs if they think they are losing. This is usually accepted.

In courts, the lawyers are always the winners.

From Saturday 27, 2010

The cover price of SMH Mon-Fri will be $1.50
The Saturday SMH cover price will be $2.50.
The Sun-Herald price is unchanged at $2.00.

The Home delivery charge is increased too and will now be.

13 cents a weekday SMH
16 cents for Saturday SMH
16 cents for the Sun Herald

And

13 cents for a Saturday AFR delivery

Interestingly it works out to a 5% increase so it is now about what it was two years ago adjusting for inflation.

Looking at the ABC figures, Alpha in the current circulation figures took a hammering of 30.1% in its circulation in the period between July and December 2009 compared with the same period in 2008.

In comparison, other male-orientated magazines such as Ralph dropped 4.8% and FHM went down 3.2%.

I think that fall is too big to be because of consumers, I suspect much of that drop is the result of newsagents and other such retailers reacting to the drop in the commission.

We expect that there will be some changes to the delivery dockets coming from XChangeIT soon from Network.

What Network is doing is changing the delivery docket so that they will more what is in each bundle. This means it should be easier to reconcile the bundles to the delivery docket. This we see as long overdue, two steps forward and should save much time.

Unfortunately, it means that the invoices and statements will be harder to reconcile as the delivery dockets will less match the invoices and what appears on the statements. This will be a big problem, particularly to those people that still do not use computers to manage magazines so one step back.

So we go two steps forward and one step backward.

Take a look at the Financial review figures from the current ABC figures for newspapers.

{chart removed]

On this list, Fairfax did the worst despite their giveaway deals which I discussed here.

Despite our growing population, we saw a 2% drop. What is also disturbing is a recent study of newsagents showed a drop of 4% in newspapers. Part of this is probably deliberate as many newsagents are changing their emphasis to other products, many did not even bother to renew their News Corp contracts. Another part could be the decline in tobacco, cigarette sales and newspapers are often linked. I think we are seeing all of that and more here.

Still, from a newsagent view, a newspaper is a very good product. They take up little room, margins are reasonable, and they bring many to the shop.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations confirms what is our major concern in newsagencies magazines, the weeklies..

Looking at the figures, its ACP that seems to be taking most of the drop.

Note number 13 which stunned me, recently Grazia increased its cover price. When we benchmarked it, it was down but ABC circulation figures show it going up in sales. Where was this increase?

It does show though what one magazine distributor told me that magazine buyers are not as price sensitive as many newsagents think.

Yesterday I was talking to some newsagents when the subject came up that some magazines are just getting too expensive.

I decided to use posbrowser to create a table of the average price of a magazine sold yearly sold in a number of newsagencies.

{table removed]

The line in pink shows the average sale price of magazines, the yellow line would be the price assuming a magazine sale price only followed the CPI. This is based on the reserve bank figures here.

As you can see magazine prices did exceed the CPI but not by much. Although there are problems with some magazines, overall the public is paying about the same allowing CPI.

News Corp in their new contracts is introduced their new model for forward billing of customers. This is something that should have happened years ago. Once in place, it will eliminate the problem of bad debts.

I suspect within a couple of years, like Fairfax all News Corp newspapers will move to subscription. This will change the dynamics of the industry immensely.

Note: Our software needs no changes to both the Windows and DOS systems to allow you to handle this new model. We are running training courses now to help people change over to the new system.

Click here for details and to sign up for these courses

For over a decade, consumers have been reading newspapers free on the net. More people are reading the newspapers and fewer are buying it.

One possible answer newspaper sees are paywall. These paywalls make people pay before they can read newspapers online. In the early days on the net, these were tried and slowly dropped. Now many newspaper companies want to try again.

If the rumours are correct, soon some of the larger Australian newspapers will be putting up paywalls.

I confess being sceptical that these *paywalls* will work for newspapers.

Here are some preliminary figures from the USA. Newsday in 2009, weekday circulation was 377,500 making it the 11th-highest in the United States.

The newspaper paid $4 million to set up a paywall. On October 22, 2009 it went up. Since the paywall gone up, there has been a 41.5% drop in site traffic. Over that period, they have gained 35 subscribers paying $5 a week{Link removed].

At present, the only financial model that works for mass newspapers is print.

http://subscriptions.fairfax.com.au/Campaigns/Campaign.aspx?cid=354&src…

The Age home delivered every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday for 52 weeks, just $52*! A subscriber saves $330 off the newsstand price.

To qualify you need to be a current Dymocks Booklover. This you can do free by filling a form in the Dymock's website.

$1 for 4 newspaper delivered a week, how much cheaper can a newspaper offer get?