Clearer skies ahead?

Thankfully, spring is on its way. We love spring for even more reasons than most, and not just because it lightens up Newsstand Hovels...

No, spring means sunshine and sunshine means no one will be able to read those troublesome digital magazines in the garden. Add that to the obvious perils of reading your tablet in the bath - and the good old print magazine is starting to regain the edge in various parts of the home.

There was an excellent article in The Observer the other day, detailing how print magazines that don’t invest heavily in digital editions are those leading the industry sales increases. This is common sense to us but is a point often lost in the constant clamour of those who insist that print is on its way out. Unfortunately many of the magazine publishers are contributing to this noise (and, as a result, contributing to falling sales). All we can do at Newsstand is keep ensuring we make as many print magazines as possible available to everyone.

There has been the usual highlighting of dropping sales over the last quarter amongst the popular titles (who are often spending obscene amounts of money on developing Android and other digital platform editions), but many magazines who take pride in their print editions are showing tremendous growth. These magazines do not grab the headlines as they are not the big sellers – but they often lead the industry in the more important areas of design and content quality. On this point, we've joined something called Pinterest, just to collate together all the best magazine cover designs we come across - please drop by, I think we are here.

At Newsstand we know the younger generations still enjoy, even prefer, the print magazine. We just hope that the print doom mongers don’t instigate a self-fulfilling prophecy, where publishers feel they must invest in digital, give away print and end up finding it impossible to survive.

So please, keep browsing the smaller titles, get hold of something different and enjoy the sunshine in the garden. Let the others be distracted by the spot on the end of their nose – it won’t be long now.

Gordon

The world seems to be in a bit of a mess, or at least the capitalist swathe of it. With all the wealth increase over, say, the last 30 years in the UK – we are no happier despite the bigger television and the increase in takeaway meals. So why then does everything the government does, answer to the mantra of economic growth? Is it not time for a new breed of politician to step forward and declare this measurement outdated & defunct, perhaps replaced by a “smiles recorded per week index” on any of the trillion CCTV cameras we have in this country?

I am a bit lax on figures, but aren’t we caught on CCTV some ridiculously high number of times per week? Facial recognition software is now available and really, judging society by the number of grins recorded would be an all-encompassing measure of happiness and of course, progress.

There are flaws, granted, not least the ridiculously poor quality of footage available. Aside from this, there are those who smile incessantly for no reason and those who have trouble bearing their teeth at all, despite all that inner elation. That good old law of averages should see those two problems off, though. Babies with wind was a concern, but their toothless nature should ensure they don't trouble the scorers. Weather conditions and other overriding factors would also need consideration, such as World Cup fourth round defeats and without doubt, Shane Warne’s grin should be multiplied by 58 million and subtracted from the overall tally.

This “Grin Index” would be in harmony with the Government’s big society ideals, as local peaks and troughs could be ascertained and analysed. Instead of the state of livers in the North East, we would understand the happiness index of every county, city and even street with alarming precision. Twitter updates and live blogs could follow. This comparison does raise the issue of alcohol/drug induced grins, but I am assuming the face recognition software would cross check the smile against the eyelids and shut these out.

Of course the Government might look to massage these figures. Comedians with Sour gum sweets would be stationed under cameras in our high streets and any late trains would be counterbalanced by mobile dental technicians roaming the platforms. Perhaps even free magazines distributed to certified miserable areas, what with their proven ability to make people happy. All this would allow politics to continue unhindered, just as we know and love it.

So there you are, the Grin Index Network (GIN) Committee, would obviously need meet on a fortnightly basis to consider, consult, confer and ultimately confabulate the various variables and potential pitfalls of doing something, anything or nothing at all to improve a situation.

Subscriptions for the clever kids

Sometimes we worry that magazine subscriptions have developed a bad reputation. The automatic renewal and “pay us later” models used by some publishers can really upset the customer and give the industry a bad name. That’s why we have concentrated all our energy on providing the services that the customers want, without all the strings attached.

So, when it comes to buying magazines as a Christmas present, we think we have the offer just right. You don’t need to “subscribe”, you don’t need to subject the recipient or yourself to ongoing direct debits and constant renewal letters and associated offers. With Newsstand you simply buy the number of issues you would like to send - and that’s it (bar the odd email…but we keep these few and far between). So, whether it’s a single copy or a longer term gift, it’s your call.

What this also allows is much more flexibility and as a result, a much better present. Instead of getting someone a year to one magazine…why not add a bit of unpredictability and buy them 3 issues of four different magazines? There are so many to choose from, you’ll always find a great mixture for anyone you know – and with it the potential to surprise them a few times and show you’ve given the present that little bit more thought! Trust us when we say there are plenty of weird, wonderful and just plain brilliant magazines out there.

We are also always happy to give you some pointers over the phone or via email. We have a pretty good idea what’s hot and what’s not, plus some lovely shiny publications that you will not have heard of. Plus there are the usual offerings like gift cards start date selection.

We want to move this magazine industry on, come with us.

Rare Newsstand newsletter slash email:

In our quest to become a little more helpful without necessarily selling you something, we have added a few things to the Newsstand magazine website that may be of interest to you.

You can now sign up for cover alerts on any of the 3,500 magazines that we hold, meaning you'll receive a simple email with the latest cover of the magazine you've requested as soon as it is available in the shops in the UK. There's no requirement to purchase and you can stop the emails at any time. We think it serves as a great reminder that a new issue has been published, as well as an overview of the contents to help you decide if it's worth tracking down or not.
We were planning to send you the next new issue based on your past purchases at Newsstand. If you would like not to recieve these cover emails, please click here.

You can now also request a particular magazine if it's out of stock. We'll try and get it for you and email you if it becomes available, with no obligation. As usual, all the onsale dates and recent covers on almost every magazine are available on the site. So if you like your magazines in print, we are the best resource there is online.

All the best,

NS

Single magazine as a small gift...

Someone at Newsstand recently turned 60 the other day, so, being the pleasant bunch that we are, we bought him a card and a little something. As it was a nice round number, we didn’t think any old card would quite do the job, so we got a large and lively number that set us back £2.99. The lucky recipient works in the office, but postage would have meant the cost of sending this birthday card – albeit a very snazzy one – would have spiralled upwards of £3.50. Now that’s quite a lot of money for something that takes all of 15 seconds to read and… hang on, don’t we send out single magazines with gift cards from around £1.20 upwards?

So, that is what we are peddling with this blog entry… We think sending a single magazine to a friend either as a small present or just a thank you is a really novel idea and seems much less wasteful than sending a, let’s face facts, boring card.

In fact it’s just a really good way of getting in touch these days – almost like a text message on steroids.

You can always find something topical to send, so if you’ve stayed at theirs for a weekend and they’ve admitted an unhealthy interest in poultry, then perhaps send them a copy of Fancy Fowl magazine as a thank you? As you can see what’s in each issue by way of the front cover on the website, it makes it even easier to send them something topical…and we think it would be much appreciated.

The fact that there are hundreds of virtually unheard of magazines available at Newsstand just makes things even better. All budgets can be catered for as well. OK, so they may not appreciate a copy of Take a Break or British Homing World (pigeons, lest you wonder), but there are art magazines and the like right up to £50 a go.

Are you seriously indebted to a keen flower arranger who happens to speak French? Art Floral magazine will certainly smooth things over. In any case, it’s not just a thank you or birthday present – but simply a “nice touch” for someone you haven’t seen for a while. It’s important to know that you can have all the ease without having to buy a subscription, that’s why we are here.

Just because we run a shop, doesn’t mean we’re good at sales…but hopefully you’ll agree with us that this has something going for it.

Content

You're always told as a website business, that providing unique and interesting content will encourage other sites to link to you and therefore increase your visibility on t'internet. Those folk at Google even have a sort of mantra for it.

Recently we've focused on magazine covers both current and recent, with the idea being that many blogs or websites might consider placing an automatically updating cover on their own pages. With around 3,500 different magazines available, there is always plenty of scope for finding a topical magazine that will ultimately provide interesting and self updating content for your own site. So, we have set up buttons on the website that make it simple to cut and paste the code anywhere. The backlinks help Newsstand, of course, but all in all we think it's a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Here is an example of the content...

More About Elle French

....the current front cover of Elle French is updated each week automatically - so that's what is displayed above. By clicking on the cover you SHOULD get a larger pop up version of the magazine and the ability to scroll through recent covers, which also allows you to read the contents. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this last bit is inexplicably not happening. Which brings us on to another mantra of our own: "The IT keeps going wrong, ohmmm", often used to relax tension or curb violence against the machines.

Whilst we're working on making that a little more snappy, and also fixing the zooming "malfunctionality", do consider using the content on your sites. Just copy the ready made code displayed when you click the "Live Cover Viewer" button under any of the magazines on the Newsstand site.

Plus let us know if there are additions we could make to enhance the offer further, we are all ears, as ever.

Digitalitis

Apologies for the radio silence (like you've missed it...). We're so old fashioned here, we actually hibernate throughout January.

I tell a lie, it's actually not the weather that makes us go to sleep, it's more the incessant drone of online soothsayers predicting the end of print magazines that has this numbing effect. I don't know whether they have just been sacked by a magazine, or perhaps been given a new iSomething by their friend from London, but there seems to be an awful lot of it going around.

We've all been to a dinner party with those parents who insist that everything in their house runs like clockwork, kids behave like angels and they all have a group hug whilst singing songs from The Sound of Music each morning after breakfast. That's what I think is happening online, it's a kind of therapy where if you tell yourself and everyone else who's listening (anyone?) the same things over and over again, then it might become true. Well, let me tell you, my kids are naughty.

Which is why it's important for magazine readers to actually ask themselves a fundamental question, and to answer it honestly: Is it a more pleasant experience to read from paper or from a screen? I'm not going to continue with all the pros and cons as I'm quite sure you have a brain of your own.

Magazine sales since 2001 have fallen roughly 32% according to the latest sales figures, that's over a whole decade. The FTSE 100 and UK houseprice graphs can make that look insignificant over much shorter terms without too much trouble. I imagine, too, that the iPad Wired magazine sales have had an even more impressive drop since it's launch....?

Aside for the guesswork above, I can divulge that "a decent" percentage of our customers here at Newsstand are firmly from the digitally enhanced generation, (and by that I mean teenagers and not ageing models). So let's not listen to those on their digital devices, banging the drum for their digital devices. Make your own mind up, be assured that the printed magazine will be around for the rest of your life and perhaps consider this whole episode as more of a "rebirth" than the curtains coming down. We do, as it helps us get to sleep at night....

And crucially: Don't buy it just because it's shiny.



PS Any data cited above is cultivated from unhelpfully labelled graphs on dubious websites and therefore may not be at all accurate....