Now there is an important election happening in VANA, which is probably the most important newsagency association outside of the ANF.

There are running for the top position two candidates with quite separate views on how VANA should be run.

One of these people, I know well as I have worked with him in the past is Trevor Mason. Trevor Mason runs an organisation First Advantage.

From my experience, Trevor Mason does know what he is talking about and puts his point out very well. In his view is that the newsagency industry needs a shake up because as he sees it about 1/3 of the newsagency industry is in real danger of disappearing soon and his solutions is a modern retail approach. This involves among other points a buying group, adequate stock control systems in the group, financial management and debt management, a product mix appropriate for newsagents, experienced work force, store layout and display of stock and adequate proximity to key markets.

Little of this can happen, unless VANA becomes more of a commercial entity. This may cause problems for members of the organisation that he sees as marginal. It will involve a change in VANA existing mission. It will also cause conflict with those that see VANA as a group and with several marketing groups that exist already in the newsagency place. It will also cause problems with existing suppliers, many of who would be extremely reluctant to get involved in such a reorganisation. Depending on your view this may be a necessary evil.

Although I do not know the other candidate Robert Wade, from what I have been told he has nothing against a modern approach to retailing but sees VANA as a group.

If you are a VANA member, I do advise you to vote as I do believe that this election could have major affect on your organisation.

One of the biggest problems in trying to predict sales of a magazine is how good the cover is for this issue. If the graphic artists make an interesting cover, the sales will go up. Yellow seems to be a particularly popular colour with the Australian public.

Here are the US magazine covers for 2010, picked by the public. It might give you some ideas for what the Australian public is looking for. I confess I would not be interested in the winner below. I just do not have time for much TV.

However, I thought these in the Best News & Business and the Most Delicious categories would have grabbed my attention.

For the full list click here.

[All images been removed here]

This powerpoint report by Newspaper works just released was I thought was a good summary where you can see quickly how Australian newspapers are doing.

As you can see little has changed.

Note one point should be kept in mind was that during this period Australian population increased by 14% and newspaper sales were stable.

I was looking through this survey of UK iPad owners available here, [Page removed] people who own iPads are using them. What is very disturbing is that it is their preferred device for reading newspapers, magazines, and books. 43% of iPad owners use it, mainly at home more than 10 hours a week.

This is disturbing for the newspaper retailers with the growing usage of iPad and its brothers. Already over 300,000 apps for newspapers have been sold or distributed here. As the newspaper companies here are pointing it, it is already affecting circulation.

The spread of these devices will continue as people get more used to them, as they fall in price, with the generous tax concessions for educational use and state and federal government plans to distribute these devices in schools and libraries.

One positive point is that the main buyers of newspapers are over the 50s who are less likely to buy iPads. Still, newsagents need to plan for a faster decline in the circulation of newspapers and magazines as these devices spread.

The Alliance of Australian Retailers has been receiving a lot of bad press mainly as many see it as a front organisation for the multi-national tobacco companies campaigning against the federal government's proposed plain packaging for retailing cigarettes.

The alliance on its website claims to be an organisation fed up with excessive regulation. It then quotes as an example the government's proposal to mandate plain packaging for cigarettes. Although I agree with them about excessive regulations, I do not feel that plain packaging for cigarettes, is a good way to present this case to the public. Nor do I see from the criticisms in the press that many others do either.

I suspect it was because of this bad press that the Australian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) withdrew from the alliance with its members claiming that they had been misled.

I am sure that nothing good will come to the ANF if it remains in the alliance.

GNS show images removed

The newspaper works, which is the propaganda organisation for the newspaper industry in Australia have put out a short powerpoint presentation about newspapers. It is available here.

I particularly like the comment that a smash hit on Youtube of 6.6 million hits would simply be Tuesday for a newspaper.

With all this doom and gloom about the media, many lose sight that newspapers are a terrific product. Everyday the consumer needs a new version, they take up little space, and you only pay for what you sell after you have been paid.

Have a look and see what you think.

The following has been sent out to newsagents with 2 weeks to go

Dear Agent – this is an early warning that Gordon and Gotch will be phasing out paper returns over the next few months. Supplementary Returns will not be accepted by paper after the 1st of August 2010 nor will any paper Point of Sale forms ( whether they are Current or Supplementary returns ). It is time for you to start exploring other options for your returns so you have plenty of time to plan for this change.

If you currently handwrite your returns on the paper forms that we send you each week then you will need to learn how to submit these returns on Gotch Connect.

If you currently have a Point of Sale system in your Store and are a member of XchangeIT we recommend you start asking your POS Providers for information on how to do EDI Returns through XchangeIT.

Our National Contact Centre will be able to assist you with your inquiries about this, or go to www.gordongotch.com.au to Register on Gotch Connect and start learning about Online Returns.

Now our users have to choose between either online or XChangeIT returns.

With Network not accepting paper printouts from our system, NDD disappearing, and now Gotch not accepting them, this means that soon our printed returns forms will not be accepted by anyone anymore.

After our meetings with Gordon and Gotch, one important issue that came out of it was getting their sales data right. Gordon and Gotch are not willing to use the sales data until the majority of newsagencies are sending accurate and timely sales data. This apparently is not happening.

As such we are re-arranging our training timetable next week to make a special course on getting XChangeIT right.

According to an announcement made at the All Things Digital conference the Australian’s iPad app has had 4,500 downloads just one week after its launch.

My immediate thought was how many of these are getting a special deal but still, that is 4,500 potential customers lost to newsagents! You would need many newsagencies to sell 4,500 Australians a day.

It is priced at $4.99 a month. That is much less than buying a physical newspaper. Is printing and distributing that much of a cost to a newspaper, or is this just an introductory offer?

Consider the economics of the offer. A home delivery of the Australian and Weekend Australian for a customer for a 26 weeks subscription $180.70, an iPad app for the Australian for the same period is about $30.00 (26 weeks x 7 Days /365 Day x 12 months x $4.99 Monthly subscription).

Clearly, you would need more than an Australian subscription to pay for the iPad but it does show the problem in technology that newsagents face now.

I was looking for the contact details for one NSW newspaper and found this. I think it might be useful for others as well.

Click here for a list of links for Sydney metro and NSW regional newspapers.

[These links have all been removed]

This webinar is now scheduled for next Tuesday.

XChangeIT errors

A recent study of XChangeIT showed that about 15% of all XChangeIT sites are failing. This webinar will take you through the setting up and administration of your XChangeIT system.

The two main surveys in the industry for publication numbers are the ABC circulation and the Roy Morgan Readership survey.

The emphasis is different as the ABC deals with circulation while the Roy Morgan deals with the readership. An example might be a newsagent would be interested in circulation while advertisers mainly in readership.

Roy Morgan readership survey has just been released and is available here.

The two results seem fairly similar.

Part of the problem I think for news suppliers in 2009, is that we lacked enough big major news that are required to generate interest which drives sales.

Now a battle is going on between ereaders in Australia now. Notably, iPad, which Apple is pushing, Amazon is pushing kindle, sony ereader which I still think could be a good chance in Australia, particularly if the large magazine and newspapers publishers adopt it and the iriver story that large Australian retailers such as Harvey Norman are pushing.

Still, the winner I suspect will be a computer. I tested the Kindle software last night, then downloaded a book and had a read.

While doing so, I felt that many of our readers here might like to experience the feel of what an e-reader is and how it functions.

So if you want to see what it is like, please do the following steps.

1) Click [link removed] to this site, and download and install the kindle software.

2) Then go to one of these sites and select a book. Read a chapter and see what you think.

[link removed]

I suspect you will notice that it is not as easy to read with the eyes as a book or magazine. This will change as the new screens come out.

The Melbourne Age has asked us to pass on to our clients that they will be making a really good special this weekend.

Together with any sale of the Age, the readers can purchase the new Norah Jones Album (The Fall) for $3.00. You will need to stock receive them. Details on the offer, codes and barcode is available here. For this offer, they should consider providing posters.

Norah Jones is Billboard's 60th-highest artist of the decade based on charting of her songs. Click here for her details.

The Magazine Publisher’s of America has just issued their report on the latest trends of magazine circulation, although American, it does have relevance to Australia too.

I particularly found interesting the figures that show a decline in single sales of magazines and the increase in subscription. This suggests to me that the current emphasis on newsagents selling single copies is wrong. Newsagents need to be encouraged to sell subscription, and they are in a perfect position to do this.

Click here for the report.

It would be nice to see an Australian version of such a report too.

The latest delivery fees for NSW are here.

As expected NSW newsagents got less than Victoria but what was a surprise was that they got such a big increase of 30%. This increase is probably is as much as the public will take.

In fact they picked up every award

Winners of the VANA awards

Congratulations to all of them from POS Solutions.

Retail Newsagent of the Year
Nextra Sunbury Newsagency

Distribution Agent of the Year

Local Delivery

Employee of the Year:
Matt Rice from Clayton Newsagency

Also two other POS Solutions clients were honoured as life members of VANA

Ron Geyer (Nextra Sunbury Newsagency) and Rick Richards (Clayton Newsagency)

[Images removed]

Take a look at the Financial review figures from the current ABC figures for newspapers.

{chart removed]

On this list, Fairfax did the worst despite their giveaway deals which I discussed here.

Despite our growing population, we saw a 2% drop. What is also disturbing is a recent study of newsagents showed a drop of 4% in newspapers. Part of this is probably deliberate as many newsagents are changing their emphasis to other products, many did not even bother to renew their News Corp contracts. Another part could be the decline in tobacco, cigarette sales and newspapers are often linked. I think we are seeing all of that and more here.

Still, from a newsagent view, a newspaper is a very good product. They take up little room, margins are reasonable, and they bring many to the shop.

For over a decade, consumers have been reading newspapers free on the net. More people are reading the newspapers and fewer are buying it.

One possible answer newspaper sees are paywall. These paywalls make people pay before they can read newspapers online. In the early days on the net, these were tried and slowly dropped. Now many newspaper companies want to try again.

If the rumours are correct, soon some of the larger Australian newspapers will be putting up paywalls.

I confess being sceptical that these *paywalls* will work for newspapers.

Here are some preliminary figures from the USA. Newsday in 2009, weekday circulation was 377,500 making it the 11th-highest in the United States.

The newspaper paid $4 million to set up a paywall. On October 22, 2009 it went up. Since the paywall gone up, there has been a 41.5% drop in site traffic. Over that period, they have gained 35 subscribers paying $5 a week{Link removed].

At present, the only financial model that works for mass newspapers is print.