Here are the latest figures from the Australian Audit Bureau of Circulation for the December quarter 2008 just out. South Australia has a sharp drop. The rest are as good as could be expected.

An interesting report in the Australian. It shows the same trend is continuing with newspapers that I blogged about in February 2008. Generally, the national papers are up and the state newspapers slightly down.

Overall compared with international newspapers sales overseas for example in the USA and Britain we are doing well especially considering the current economic crisis.

From what is happening, I think the newspapers have delivered as good a result as can be expected.

Newsagents should be more concerned with magazines than newspapers as the results for weekly magazines from the Audit Bureau of Circulation are just dismal, the magazine companies blame the economic times but I think it is the internet. 

Many in the newsagency industry have various views on Cardplai. However no-one knows how digital music will go in newsagencies because no-one has done it. Everyone is guessing.

My argument is that the digital music industry is huge. Doing a net search, I found in 2008 about 20% of recorded music sales are digital. That is 1 billion songs. Australians have embraced this and it is a big market here. For instance, in January 21, 2009 the week's ARIA chart in Australia, the No. 1 single was Jessica Mauboy's Burn. It sold 8537 copies; 7986 (94%) of those were sold digitally.

The Australian consumer wants to buy singles digitally. For example in the same week the No. 1 album, was Kings of Leon's Only By The Night. It sold 12,542 copies, of which just 923 (7%) were from legal sites.

Nor does the Australia consumer want to use subscription-based services as these have struggled to connect with music fans; they prefer to pick the tracks they want.

So the Cardplai model of the user buying a card and the user selecting the tracks is right.

With so many people buying music, why would some not buy in a newsagency? They are coming now to your shop to get a greeting card. What about the present? Say a $20 music card. A SAVVYTUNE you will make about 5% a $1. A gift card iTunes (which only POS users have) will give you about 7%, $1.40. A Cardplai gift card will give you $5.00. What would you rather get?

With 500,000 plus tracks on Cardplai, there must be something there for everyone. If some people do not like Cardplai, you are not worse off as you can still sell them an iTunes gift card. Maybe others will like it and your bigger range is a plus.

The commitment asked is small. You get paid back this amount before anyone else. If you do not like it, there is a cooling off period to return the stock.

With so little asked, why not give Cardplai a go? Maybe newsagents can make a go of digital music – others have.

{Please click on image for more detail}

Cardplai, the only greeting card with the gift of music, is now available in an integrated form for POS Systems users.

To celebrate this Cardplai has a special offer exclusive to POS Systems users.

For one week only Cardplai are extending the introductory offer sign up security deposit for only $99.95, instead of the standard $199.95.

This offer also comes with a 7 day, full refund cooling off period.

Also the security deposit is counted as credit against your first card sales. After that, all cards are sold on consignment.

What is Cardplai?

Cardplai is the perfect gift for under $20.

The Cardplai range allows you to offer your customers a combine gift and card range that appeals to all age groups and incomes.

Each Cardplai greeting card allows you to go online to Cardplai and pick 10 digital tracks to make a mixed tape¹ from a catalogue of over 500 000 tracks.

For older or less technology savvy customers, they can simple buy the card and send it like any other card. The recipient then goes online and picks 10 tracks to download.

Cardplai allows to you carry a gift range of 38 000 albums in one small unit.

You make $5 from every card you sell and cards are sold on consignment.

If you feel that a gift range of under $200 that appeals to all age groups will help your business sign up today by calling 1300 651 252 or go online to fill in an application at cardplai.

Remembers, the $99.95 sign up offer is exclusive to Pos Systems users and finishes on Friday February 20.

Regards

Craig Harris
Tel 1300 651 252
Cardplai
Director

To fill in more details on the previous entry, without much warning Fairfax have made some changes to the way they manage subscriptions in Victoria.

These affect

1) The way you set up your deliveries as Fairfax will no longer be supplying an end date for their subscriptions

2) How you order on Connect Online

3) The account numbers you currently have for subscribers

4) The auditing processes you will need to put in place to manage your deliveries.

To help you out we have created a comprehensive instruction guide telling you how to deal with these changes in the PosBrowser system. These you should have now.

If you have any questions about the above, please contact us

Regards

Garth

As many of you know, Fairfax have recently introduced many changes to their subscription.

These sections of your software are effected

1) The Subscriber account numbers
2) The expiry dates
3) The Offer Codes
4) The ordering on Connect
5) Announcements to Fairfax
6) Connect Start and Stop files

The updates to handle these for posbrowser went out today. All our users will be automatically updated by tomorrow. The information sheets have also been sent out. If you do not have them now, please contact us AS SOON AS POSSIBLE.

Fairfax has just introduced their new model for subscription customers in Victoria. Soon they intend to roll it out to other states.

We need several fundamental changes to both the DOS and windows system to allow you to handle the new subscription model.

Tomorrow the updates for this, in the windows version will start rolling out together with information sheets.

We expect on 23rd Feb that a DOS update and information sheets incorporating these changes will be released too.

Online advertising is continuing its growth. You can see that in the newspaper advertising getting smaller.

Although the rate slowed, its growth is massive.

Much of that has to be from newspapers.

I am sure that it is worrying to some like Fairfax which had about 40 per cent of its newspaper revenue, I was told from advertising.

Newsagencies are information shops. So I like checking newspaper sales whenever something extraordinary happens. If it goes up, it shows that we still have an important part to play in the community. It will be interesting to see the effect of the sales of newspaper over the current brushfires compare to last year.

As always the rule I use is if someone wants to help let me know and in return, I share the results with them.

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20090206/pdf/31fxrbqczfrfkn.pdf

News corp. have just release their earning report for the last quarter of 2008. To me, it does not look good. What is particularly interesting to us is what it said about its Australian operation.

The Australian newspaper group reported 18% lower second quarter operating income in local currency terms versus the second quarter of fiscal 2008 primarily due to lower classified advertising revenues resulting from declines in the employment and auto sectors and higher costs associated with pension expenses and headcount reductions.

Overall advertising revenues were down 4% as compared to a year ago. Circulation revenues were in line with the second quarter of the prior year.

{emphasis added}

However it confirms what I have been saying, the immediate problem with newspapers is the drop in advertising not circulation. What is a worry is that in Australia News Corp is probably less affected by the advertising drop than most other newspapers.

The full report is available here.

Fairfax are making important changes to their systems. These will be implemented in Victoria immediately and then rolled out to everyone.

One that many will be troubled by is that all subscriptions from now on will only have a start date. You are expected to continue to deliver it until you receive a stop notice from either the customer or Fairfax. This new procedure could be dangerous if a notice was mislaid somewhere.

Looks like network are not the only ones making radical changes to their systems. Several other newsagent suppliers have contacted us that important changes are going to happen soon.

By now everyone should have is the Fairfax paper that was sent out to everyone today. If not, then contact Fairfax AS SOON AS POSSIBLE for a copy of the current changes titled “New System Communication.”

We are having a meeting with Fairfax tomorrow to discuss it with their Newspaper Sales, Supply & Strategy Manager to discuss it further. Then I will have further details about how we are going to handle these changes.

Well the Herald Sun have great hopes on their Monopoly promotion set for the 4th February. Previously it was one of the most successful newspaper promotions ever. Last year this promotion helped to sell about 300,000 extra copies.

So today Herald Sun are launching a massive TV, radio, press and online marketing activity to support its roll out. We hope it does well again.

Clearly the slide in advertising is affecting worldwide free newspapers, much more than paid one. Several oversea recently closed. I was reading a story here about one in Spain.

In Australia, now the circulation of free newspapers is low compared to paid newspapers. The biggest free paper is MX and it circulation (M-F average) figures are now about

Sydney 95,084
Melbourne 91,200
Queensland 40,609

This morning one newsagent emailed me a story on a competitor website. The story is about a supplier that is trying to enter the newsagency marketing space. According to the story, they went to a newsagency group and were told that if they wanted that group to support them they would have to pay a six figure amount. The key point here was the supplier did not offer the money but it was asked of them. He asked me if I knew anything about it, if so whether it was true and was it his group.

Although I am not 100% sure, I suspect that it was. A few days ago, a big supplier came to see me. They are not in the newsagency marketplace and they are trying to get into it. They told me that they had spoken to this newsagency group earlier and that they were thinking of entering an arrangement with them. They wanted to know my thoughts on this newsagency group. Considering the size of money sought the supplier would have to be big. Since not that many large suppliers are actively thinking of entering the newsagency marketplace now, to me it is likely it is this supplier.

The money itself would not be secret; if as I suspect it is the same supplier they would have disclose such fees publicly. However would this information be widely distributed to newsagents? Bill Express made no secret that they gave money to the ANF, that they hired newsagent consultants who also made no secret that they were being paid but many newsagents did not know this!

The problem for a group is who is going to pay for the promotion of this new product? Are the members supposed to pay for a supplier to promote his goods into their market space? No, surely the supplier should pay for it however this puts the group in a conflict of interest. One hat the group is wearing is their members and the other hat is the supplier’s money. Sometimes members ask themselves which hat their group is wearing?

Our answer to this supplier was that we are interested and excited in their products. We believe that newsagents can benefit from them. We would have to consider their proposal on its merits but we were keen. If the group did run with the product and one of our clients wanted to do it. We would do the best to help our client.

However we explained to them the stink that still existed from Bill Express and the ANF deal. We would prefer nothing to do with something that could remotely appear similar. If I am right that it is the same supplier, then when they went to one of my competitors and asked the same question. It appears that our competitor replied with the same answer that we did. If so, good on them

Any newsagent listed for weekly returns with network have to get their returns in by today or they loss this month’s credits. So the rush was on today. Clearly those clients that use XchangeIT EDI returns had far less problems today, than those that are doing it manually. Part of the problem is that many magazines have had their recall dates changed. Still anyone with posbrowser using XchangeIT should seriously consider switching to EDI returns.

Until recently, it was only in science fiction shows. Now it is available in Europe.

The subscriber say, Mary, picks what she wants to read.

Then a personal newspaper is created for Mary based on what she wants to read. On the front page of this personal newspaper, it includes a personal greeting (Good Morning, Mary!). Now at 7:00 am this newspaper is printed and delivered by Swiss Post to Mary by 11 a.m. Swiss Post obviously is not up to Australian newsagents standards.

At least with this model, you know the subscriber is getting a newspaper with information that they want. If they do not like a writer, are not interested in sport or they just do not like the political view of the newspaper, they just change it. What I really like is it opens the possibilities for personalized advertising. The newspaper of the future might be a cheap way of sending direct mail. That would give it a big plus in the market.

Several people contacted us about what they felt was a dramatic increase in support charges just announced by a competitor. This competitor had offered no explanation for why the big increase was necessary.

See the table below and make your own decision, if these are dramatic increases.

Ask yourself, do you really see in 2009 service industries getting dearer are their main expenses interest payments, wage bill, rent, telephone etc going up? On the contrary, almost everyone is more concerned with deflation than inflation. Do you see the justification? The people that contacted us clearly did not see this price rise as fair or reasonable.

In comparison, POS Solutions charges $90/hour.

That is 74% less.

As we are expecting few increases this year so we see no reason to change it.

So we have formed the view from the evidence presented by these people that we too regard this increase as excessive and unjustified so we cannot blame people for complaining.

I think our advertising approach needs changing, as clearly there is a reason for us to emphasize fairness.

The people selling to collectors for newspapers are already out on ebay here.

For a Sydney Morning Herald with Obama on the cover, they want $1.51 and $64.71 postage.

I wonder what the publishers would think of that delivery fee. Maybe the publishers should think of issuing special commemorative issues as clearly there is a market for it.

Anyway I will enjoy seeing what price these newspapers go for.

Maybe one of my readers wants to try getting into this market too. After all many of you still have copies, have a plastic wrapping machine to wrap it and all you need is an ebay account, which is easy to get.

We are hosting our newsagency show Australia wide. It is designed for people looking for a computer system or those that want to upgrade. It will be a great chance to see the latest technology available. In February, we start in Adelaide. There you will be able to see the top-selling newsagency computer system. You will see exactly how it helps with sales, processing magazine handling returns, stock orders, customer deliveries and subagents?