Tuesday, 20 October 2015

Newsstand and distribution

Newsstand and distribution
 This is the magazine newsstand in WHSmith

It contains a large variety of music magazine covering most genres. The way it is displayed is very important as they are stacked on top of each other but yet the most popular magazines are at the front so the consumers do not have to search for them. However, the less known magazines can dis-benefit from this as they are placed at the back with only the masthead and teaser visible sometimes only masthead. Although this doesn’t mean the reader won’t pick it up, it does mean there is less chance of it being sold than the magazines at the front.
Another thing I have noticed is the placement of the cover lines varies from the left third to the right third, and sometimes even in the middle of the cover. The placement depends on the main image, which is different in every cover.

Role of the Distributor 

A Distributor works on behalf of a magazine publisher whereby a newspaper tends to both publisher and manages its distribution to reach the market.
Each distributor has many publishers and the key role of a distributor is to provide their publisher clients, the publishers a route to market for their magazines and through economies of scale is able to do this at a cost that is far lower than should a publisher want to undertake the task for them.
There are 4 primary distributors in the UK: Comag, Frontline, Market force and Seymour in addition there are a number of smaller ones who tend to look after smaller circulation titles.
In the main, the 3 primary distributors have dedicated publisher clients that in essence own the distributors.

The distribution method is used in most shop, newsagents and supermarkets such as WH smith. The distributer is giving a set number of magazines to retail outlets (e.g. 20 copies). If less than the set number (e.g. 15) the rest of the magazine (5) is returned. This is very wasteful expensive for the distributor, because many copies are going to wasteful, without profit for the distributor.                                                                                   

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