I’ve been reading with interest the comments about CF on the forum. It wouldappear that the general opinion is that it’s a good title with anenthusiastic following, however there are many anglers that struggleto get hold of a copy.
Believe me, if I could get more copies into the newsagents Iwould. It may help you understand this if I explain how the magazineworld works.
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The first thing to realise is that all monthly magazines aredistributed on a ‘sale or return basis’. Basically this means that weonly get paid for the copies that are sold. Ideally we would like tosell 75% of all copies printed and there are certain times when we doachieve this efficiency. However, a figure of between 63% and 68% ismore the norm, with certain months dipping below this. The Foot andMouth crisis, combined with the bad weather of spring didn’t doanyone in the fishing industry any favours.
Now consider these figures.
Each magazine costs about £ 1.00 to produce (this does notinclude staff wages, general office expenses like property rent,rates, computers etc). We receive approximately 50% of the coverprice for each copy sold, in CF’s case 50% of £ 2.50 =£ 1.25. As you can see, we don’t have to ‘throw away’ too manycopies to get into a negative financial position. Of course, this iswhere advertising comes to the rescue. The revenue produced balancesthe books and hopefully enables us to make a profit. But believe me,CF isn’t going to make anyone rich – me included.
Even if we wanted to flood the market with copies of CF wecouldn’t. Basically we print what our distributor tells us to print.They have a sales force working with a selection of different titlesat wholesale level. Naturally they try to get us into more shops butto do this at wholesale level isn’t easy. If a wholesaler takes 1000copies of CF, which are then distributed to 200 shops, supplying thewholesaler with 2000 copies achieves nothing but additional waste.The wholesaler will still only supply the 200 shops. As we alreadyknow that most shops that stock CF will sell between 60% and 70%putting more copies in will not increase sales. If a shop takes 10copies and sells 7, putting 20 copies in isn’t going to increase thefinal sale figure is it?
In an effort to increase our distribution network, ourdistributors do have ways of negotiating with shops, usually on agroup basis (Forbouys etc.) and we constantly monitor our sales atshop level. However with so many publications now available, shelfspace is limited, especially for smaller titles like CF. Imagine ifyou were a retailer. You can allocate space to CF with a potentialmonthly sale of 20 copies or a new Home Improvement magazine with apotential sale of 200 copies – which would you choose?
Another way of increasing distribution is with ‘cover mountedgifts’. By giving a gift away you can increase market saturation, butonly for a limited time (usually a couple of months). We have to buythe gift and pay for it to be mounted which can increase theproduction cost by 50%. If this additional cost wasn’t enough, wethen have to pay the shops to increase our allocation!
So where does that leave you, the angler who wants CF?
Well you could subscribe, which will cost you no more than thecost of the magazine and you’ll have the option of a free gift. Inthe last year we’ve had Fox System Boxes, Fox Microns, Maver Luggage,Stainless Thermos Flasks, Reels etc. All great gifts. The otheroption is to order a regular copy from your local newsagent. Somedon’t realise this facility is available, but by requesting a copythe newsagent has to order it for you. If they won’t give us a ringand we’ll sort it out for you. Colleen has got one hell of a temperand you know what they say about scorned women.
So there you have it. The basic guide to magazine publishing. Andyou thought it was money for old rope!
Regards
Simon Roff
Publisher, Coarse Fisherman Magazine.
