As we are collecting more information, we are sending information sheets on how to handle the coming holiday period. They are going out now and will continue to go over the holiday period.

It is always the same a last-minute scramble for information from the newspaper and magazine companies which is a continual source of frustration to us all. What justification is there for this doubt and confusion with the newspaper and magazine companies over this season? They have plenty of warning as the public holidays for Christmas and New Year are set well in advance. You can click here {link removed} for a listing of Public Holidays for Christmas and New Year in Australia for 2009, they are already listed now for 2010. Many are listed in 2012, several in 2013.

The newspaper and magazine companies have all have done it last year, the year before that and a hundred times before.

Why cannot they get their act together?

Our understanding is that now 30% of newsagents have signed the new agreement which is in line with an ANF survey done a short time ago. This survey said that only 30% would accept it AS IS.

What is wrong is the ACCC have created this unfair David and Goliath conflict by allowing newsagents to bargain collectively only voluntary on a state level. This makes it a pointless exercise, to include the newsagents’ state organisations. It also forces the ANF to stay out.

As there is no monopoly now, what the ACCC should have done is forced publishers and distributors to deal with these state bodies for those newsagents that nominate their state organisations as their agent to negotiate on their behalf.

Still, the state organisations are doing the best they can for their members. VANA newsletter detailing their concerns about these contracts.

For those of you that have not signed and returned your agreements, VANA advice is to contact News Corp to discuss any issues you have.

From my discussions with newsagents that have given up these contracts, the long-term effect to the business is greater than you might think. I know a person who sold his territory to another newsagent on the understanding that he would continue to get the publications at 25%. That newsagency was soon taken over by another newsagency and that one refused to honour this contract with this new subagent saying they could do it for nothing. Now the new subagent is at 12.5%.

Jacek Utko has become a legend in the newsagency industry because he has recently increased circulation by 30% to 100% by redesigning the look of many newspapers in Eastern Europe. He put in a centerfold story, some nice graphics etc.

Can good redesign help Australian newspapers too?

Please listen and make up your own mind.
[youtube]zHuH8P_Vqc0[/youtube]

http://subscriptions.fairfax.com.au/Campaigns/Campaign.aspx?cid=329&src…

Choose from these 20 week gift subscription packages:
* 7-day home delivery for just $59 – save 74%
* Weekend home delivery for just $29 – save 66%
* Sunday home delivery for just $19 – save 50%

There is more to celebrate! Subscribers will receive a $100 voucher to spend at the Sydney Morning Herald Wine Service and with any purchase will then receive a complimentary bottle of Dal Zotto sparkling wine.

How much cheaper can a newspaper offer get?

Several information sheets are being sent out now to help you handle the newspapers and magazines over the seasonal period.

We are sending them out as soon as the suppliers inform us.

Although generally in newsagencies when we look at the magazine department we use quantities unlike most other departments where we look at total sales, I am not so sure this is right.

I decided to look at magazines that deal with house improvements. So using our system I created an instant category for them. I then examine them for July/September quarter 2008 and compare that to July/September quarter 2009.

What I first noticed is the dominant magazine in this category is AUST HOUSE & GARDEN which had 57% of this category. Here are the raw figures.

This category did well over this period for this newsagent. By quantity sales grew by 33%, revenue growth was a respectable 19.8%. As you can see, there were major variations in quantity sales by titles. This you can often see in benchmarking when the quantities of sales are low. You might see it better in the graph below

You can also see dramatic changes in total sales because of changes in prices of magazines.

Now I leave it to you to decide what would be the meaningful result by quantity or total for you?

I read the following story, in a press release by a gaming company Amuso, {link removed}. It appears that News Ltd may include online gaming in its websites attempts to charge customers for reading its news stories. Although I do not think that micropayments will work for news, this idea I think may work. As it makes payments voluntary.

News Ltd is to introduce gaming as the next part of its strategy to extract money from users of its news websites, with the launch of a pay-to-play trivia game on its Daily Telegraph website. Daily Telegraph Trivia will be a flash-based game embedded on the Telegraph site. Users will be charged in the region of $1.50 to play. The platform is being provided by the London-based company Amuso, which has an existing relationship with fellow News Corp company MySpace. Users will either be able to play for free or pay to enter games against other players with the entry fees pooled as a prize. Amuso already powers gaming across the world, so there will be an immediate pool of opponents. The contestants are able to communicate with one another via live chat during the game and invite friends to play too. Topics include general knowledge, entertainment, celebrity, music and movies. The technology is a simple, embeddable Flash widget, making it easy to roll out to other News Ltd sites if it makes good money for the Tele’s site. However, a spokesman for News Digital Media told Mumbrella: “At this stage it is just a Daily Telegraph initiative.” Barak Rabinowitz, the CEO of Amuso, said: “Having experienced great international success with companies such as MTV and MySpace, we are very excited to be launching into the Australian market with dailytelegraph.com.au.” Michael Robinson News Digital Media’s CEO of media, said ”Our users will now be able to take advantage of world-class gaming technology.” Amuso is bankrolled by Mangrove Capital Partners, one of the founding investors in Skype. The move is the latest by News Corp as the company seeks to widen the revenue streams for its news-based sites beyond advertising. Boss Rupert Murdoch has been signalling for more than a year that he intends for the company to start generating significant revenues from its online news sites. In the UK, News Corp is further down the path with Times Online set to charge users for 24 hour access and the Sun newspaper the biggest short haul travel firm in the UK.

Although the Australian newspaper circulation stood up well compared with its overseas counterparts, it did record a slight fall in the September quarter of 1.7%. The question arose how relevant it to a newsagent as several said that they did not feel it.

So one Victorian newsagent that claimed not to feel it, we decided to check their newsagency’s figures using our benchmarking project and compare it to the ABC figures for July to September quarter. The benchmarking result for their newsagency when we examined their information was this.

{image removed]

As you can see, it did not follow it exactly but the trend is similar. What we think happened is as newspaper sale's slight drop (1.1%) was not enough for a person to notice anecdotally. Another would be that his main newspapers had a price-rise so much of the sales drop was hidden by the price rise.

We were told that on 31/Dec/2009 the old version of XChangeIT will closed. From then everyone not updated will be cut off.

We have been in constant contact with our clients and XChangeIT to get them to update. Now we estimate that we have about 40% left to update. It is a monster of a job to discover who they are. The alternative is come New Year’s Day, the support lines at XChangeIT and POS Solutions will be flooded with people asking why XChangeIT no-longer works.

Please do not ask me to justify why it was selected New Year’s Day to end the old version, we did not want that as we felt it is just asking for trouble.

We do have an information instruction sheets here on how to update your XChangeIT here.

Or you can call XChangeIT direct
Phone 1300 551 212
Email [email protected]

I am not allowed to release the ABC circulation figures so I pulled this public chart from an article that admit-ably negative towards the Melbourne Age. Check how your newspapers go compared to the national figures.

[Removed]

What I noticed looking at these figures is that overall newspaper circulation has dropped more for number two newspapers in a region. The era of a one-newspaper city in many places will possibly be a reality in Australia.

I just spoke to a client about magazines miss after doing returns. I showed him some special reports that are great in making sure you do not miss any magazines due for return.

What they do is while doing returns, they show you what is due for return, but so far missed.

Another use is that they tell you what is shoplifted.

Garth wrote a detailed information sheet which is now available that explains more about it.

Note there is in the DOS system, in the magazine section a missing report too.

I was talking to a few people and was stunning that several did no know what an advertising wrap on a newspaper was. So here is a picture of the Sydney Morning Herald with a wrap. Because it was unusual, it did create a visual interest with some customers.

Several in the industry condemn it, I think they are wrong. Today we have to be practical, what is keeping newspaper prices down is advertising.

Please ask yourself this.

Does it matter if the main news of the day does not appear until page two or three? If I want to read the news, are you not prepared to turn a page if the newspaper is cheaper?

Has anyone got figures to show that the wrap affected SMH sales?

Did not the advertisement create more interest to many new consumers than the main news?

Newspaper industry in Australia now

The official ABC Newspaper circulation has just been released. Sales of metropolitan newspapers in Australia recorded a 1.1 decline. National newspapers fell, the Australian fell 4.2% and The Australian Financial Review dropped 9.7%.

Overall what they show is that Australian newspaper circulation figures are only slightly dropping as you can see from the chart.

Despite what many are saying for most newsagent, it is still a good product.

What is a deep concern is the newspaper companies' revenue are down this year by 9.2% mostly because of fall in advertising. If this advertising drop continues, then newspapers will need to increase the cover price.

While at a newsagent, we discussed magazine sell though rates. Something that I discussed a few times at user meetings. So when I came back to the office I decided to create some reports using our windows program for them to give them a feel of its power. Thinking that others might be interesting too, I decided to blog about it here.

As you can see, there is a significant variation monthly. That is why if you intend to do benchmarking you need about three months figure. With one month, you get these wild variations.

I decided to then see whether it made much difference by supplier. So I took three suppliers and tested them.

You can that there is a significant difference. NDC is certainly doing something right. Maybe the data, our systems supplied them about six months ago for their Sales Based Replenishment program really helped.

I suspect this is the end of the project.

What caused this project that everyone had such hopes from working as someone deeply involved in the project I would put down these points.

Newsagents are not a destination point for music. Newsagents could sell the product but not market it as they do not get these customers.

To help start it newsagents needed help, in what to them was a new market. Yet many newsagents felt frustrated by what they saw was poor communication by Cardplai.

Competitors that people that want such pre-paid music cards go to are retailers that have known expertise and music departments.

The product well newsagents took on a giant. Although the Cardplai website and range of products were good, it was lacking compared to what say iTune offered. iTunes has almost every piece of music you can want. Now it has more than 10 million different tracks.

What the public often want are dubious legal products like US iTunes cards that newsagents cannot sell.

Cardplai prices were good compared to standard prices but often pre-paid cards have huge discounts. BigPond was offering 50% off prepaid music vouchers through Big W and Woolworths for its BigPond Music service, while Apple is selling $50 iTunes vouchers through Big W for only $30 -- a 40% price cut.

Newsagents could not offer to afford on their margins, such discounts. How Big W can is a question, I would like to know?

Cardplai advertising campaign need for launching such a product was nowhere enough. I am sure millions would be needed. iTune which I mentioned above is owned by Apple spends millions in Australia, worldwide its advertising budget was $US486 million in 2008.

It would have been good for newsagents to carve a niche for themselves in this market, and we tried but like so many projects all we can do is learn and move on.

I had a discussion today with a client. What had happened is the issue code for some of the magazines were blank so the EDI return was rejected.

The cause of the problem was using their old system when the XChangeIT invoices did not arrive on time, they manually entered in the invoice but they did not enter the issue code. What we did is got the issue codes for them and put them in.

However our software has a function to stop this from happening.

Please do the following

-> Creditors
-> Creditor Maintenance
-> Calling up your creditor say G&G;
-> Going to the Purchasing Tab
-> Clicking Edit
-> Click the option "When invoicing, must always supply issue/extra info"
-> click save.

Now if anyone invoices for this creditor and they forget to enter information in the extra description field. They will get a message to enter the issue code.

[link removed]

Magazine distributors could do more to advertise these awards. Nice stickers for the shop saying that this magazine won this award could help many newsagents to sell more.

The complete list of Winners, Runner Ups’ and Highly Commended’s is listed below:

Magazine of the Year

Winner: Cosmos Magazine, Luna Media.

Category 1 B2B Magazine of the Year

Winner: Professional Beauty – The Intermedia Group

Runner up: ‘Nett’ Magazine – He Said She Said Communications

Highly Commended: Sold Magazine – GASP Media

Category 2 Consumer Magazine of the Year

Winner: Cosmos Magazine – Luna Media

Runner up: Australian Road Rider’s Cruiser & Trike – Universal Magazines

Highly Commended: Selector Magazine – Australian Wine Selectors

Highly Commended: Runner's World Magazine, Australia & New Zealand – Dingoes Refrain

Category 3 Custom Magazine of the Year

Winner: ‘Nett’ Magazine – He Said She Said Communications

Runner up: Mercedes Magazine – Hardie Grant Magazines

Category 4 Digital-only Publication of the Year

Winner: ‘The Overclocker – Sproog Media

Category 5a Best magazine Launch

Winner: The Week – Dennis Publishing

Runner up: Australian Advanced Aesthetics magazine – The Intermedia Group

Category 5b Best magazine Relaunch

Winner: Spice Magazine – The Intermedia Group

Runner up: Dogs NSW Magazine – Mahlab Media

Category 6 Best Small Publisher

Winner: Luna Media

Runner up: T-World

Category 7 Best annual printed publication

Winner: UDIA 2009 – The Magazine Publishing Company

Runner up: Wellbeing Food – Universal Magazines

Highly Commended: Outdoor Design Source – Universal Magazines

Category 8 Best Print and Media Integration

Winner: Four Four Two magazine – Haymarket Media

Runner up: ‘Voice&Data; Magazine +eMag’ – Westwick-Farrow Media

Category 9 Editor of the Year

Winner: Brett Winterford, ‘iT News’ – Haymarket Media

Runner up: Rob Johnson, Editor of ‘Next’, ‘Smile’, ‘Bite’, Broadway’, and ‘Restaurant & Catering’ magazines – Engage Media

Highly Commended: Lisa Holmes, Runners World magazine Australia & New Zealand – Dingoes Refrain Publishing

Highly Commended: Mark Hughes, Selector Magazine – Australian Wine Selectors

Category 10 Journalist of the Year

Winner: Zoe Lyon – Lawyers Weekly, LexisNexis Media

Runner up: Trevor Treharne – Four Four Two magazine, Haymarket Media

Category 11 New Journalist of the Year

Winner: Paul Rodger – The Open Road, NRMA Publishing

Runner up: Jeff Megahan - Club Marine Magazine

Highly Commended: Jacqueline Hayes – Cosmos magazine, Luna Media

Category 12 Best Analytical Writing

Winner: Luna Media – Cosmos Magazine, Luna Media

Runner up: Harriet Morely – Runners World Magazine Australia & New Zealand, Dingoes Refrain

Category 13 Best Integrated Media Advertisement or Campaign

Winner: DMAG – SmartyPantz Communications

Runner up: What's New In Process Technology magazine – Westwick-Farrow Media

Category 14 Best Digital Engagement Strategy

Winner: Cosmos Magazine – Luna Media

Category 15 Most successful subscriptions campaign

Winner: Australian Road Rider’s Cruiser & Trike – Universal Magazines

Runner up: Westwick-Farrow Media magazines

** Designer of the Year

Winner: Kelley Sheenan – Peppermint magazine

Category 16 Best Designer – B2B
Winner: Loni Parker – The Magazine Publishing Company.

Category 17 Best Designer – Consumer
Winner: Kelley Sheenan – Peppermint magazine.

Category 18 Best Designer – Custom Media
Winner: The design team at: The Open Road, NRMA Publishing

Category 20 Best Customer Magazine Cover
Winner: Craig Hodges and Georgina Armour – ‘Private Word’ (NAB), Edge Custom Media
Runner up: Stephen Dibden – Australian Classic Car, NRMA Publishing
Highly Commended: Alys Martin – Lawyers Weekly, LexisNexis Media
Highly Commended: Eddie Zammit – T-world

Category 21 Innovation in Distribution
Highly Commended: Sproog Media

Category 22 Sustainability in publishing
Winner: Kelley Sheenan – Peppermint magazine.

Board awarded ‘The Pinnacle Award’
Winner: John Blondin – CEO, Media Titles

It is official, XChangeIT is shortly closing the old system in December. With the recent troubles, many refused to change to the new version. Shortly they will need to decide either to run with the new system of XChangeIT or stop using it as XChangeIT do not intend to keep running a duplicate system.

XChangeIT had a difficult choice, either to do it now or wait till January. As it was the larger traffic from the Beta tests to the initial roll-out that caused the earlier problems, many had concerns about increasing the traffic by adding more customers so they pushed for January after more testing. However XChangeIT picked now as they are confident the problems are fixed and they think it is everyone benefit that we move now.

I can verify the new XChangeIT system has been stable for almost a month although we have recently had reports from some of our customers that magazine suppliers have not been receiving EDI return forms sent through the new XChangeIT Link. Our programming staff is now working with XChangeIT to find why this is happening. Fortunately our support staff do have a work-around for this issue now.

If anyone wants to discuss any of this with me, or any other issue you are welcome to call me.

http://www.accesspos.com.au/posblog/tower-systems-pos-package-trumped-b…

A competitor has just released an announcement about their small newsagency system offering which indirectly refers to us although not mentioning us by name.

Firstly I agree with them about the scanner. we do not recommend a hand-held scanner in the cash register. These hand-held scanners are perfect for the back-office say for magazine returns and customer statements but not retail. So we always offer and recommend a hands-free laser scanner for the counter. It is rare that people do not take this offer.

Point 1: Our standard small newsagency system includes a hands-free laser scanner.

We offer our clients’ on-site manufacturer’s warranty on computers too. It is not free. Often we can offer you computers cheaper, without such warranties. Also, I think they oversell it as they come with heaps of conditions which vary between suppliers. It is important if you intend to take a manufacturer's warranty that you read their conditions first. 

Some point to note while reading their warranties is they generally are from three to five years. These conditions change over time, so the first year might be labour and parts, the second only parts. So in the second year, you will pay for the engineer time of travel as well as the time in the shop to fix it on-site. This can be expensive.

Also, these companies can be expensive for a free warranty. For example, one client called one when a computer did not work. They traced the problem to a wrong driver that the newsagent installed when he brought a new printer. So the repair company said it was misuse and sent the newsagency, a large bill for a non-support urgent job.

Another issue is many are the next day. Say the computer breaks down on Thursday night. You will not be able to register it for a support call till Friday morning when you will talk to their technicians and then if they decide to send someone it will be Monday. If say it was Friday evening they come on Tuesday, if Monday they come on Wednesday and so on. You should find out exactly what next day means.

Other problems I have with them are they are ruthless on support. Say a hard disk breaks, they will replace the hard drive but they do not reload the software. So you have a computer that needs a new installation.

Point 2: Our standard small newsagency system includes an on-site manufacturer’s warranties too generally for three to five years.

As far as product preset buttons in our cash register, with us, there are no limits.

Point 3: We have no limitation on the number of product preset buttons in our cash register.

I agree computer is much faster and accurate with touch than a physical computer keyboard or mouse. Much of our system has our own preset computer keyboard and mouse inbuilt. Some software providers claim to have touch but it is only in a few places like the cash register and even then it is restricted, so I agree you should be wary of these claims. Check that they provide complete touch before continuing otherwise you will have a computer which can be used fast in a small section. Note I am sure if you compare our touch to others, you will find their wanting.

Point 4: Our system does not need a physical computer keyboard or mouse for any function.

We have had varying reports from our customers stating that magazine suppliers have not been receiving EDI return forms sent through the new XChangeIT Link platform. Our programming staff has been working hard in conjunction with XChangeIT to determine why this is happening. In the meantime, the following steps can be taken to ensure that return forms are sent in a timely manner.

Make sure that you are sending your EDI returns from the XChangeIT Link computer. Pos Browser’s sole task is to reconcile your scanned returns with the forms sent to you by the magazine supplier. The completed form is then placed in XChangeIT Link’s outgoing folder where it is picked up and sent on its way by your XChangeIT Link software. If the return file is not generated on the XChangeIT Link computer it will simply sit in the outgoing folder, even though Pos Browser will show that the form has been sent.

After you have generated the return file open your XChangeIT Link software and check the log in the bottom left hand corner of the main screen. You will notice a time and date stamp followed by the words “1 file has been uploaded successfully”. This tells us that XChangeIT Link has scanned its outgoing folder for files and sent them accordingly. If it reports that the file has failed to send please contact our support department.

Some people may still get a call from the supplier saying that the file was never received at their end. In this case, do not be concerned as one of our support technicians can un-send the file so that it can be generated and uploaded again.

by Ben Wade