Now many people have been PCs in particular laptops to read ebooks for years. On my laptop that I am using now, I have about ten e-books to read. Using its built in Wi-Fi, I download e-books straight into the laptop. I also read newspapers and my technical journals on my laptop.

Here is the one I use is a Sony e-reader. It is small and lightweight.

This laptop technology is not new, I and probably a million Australians use it everyday.

I am not even that sure I am keen to get an e-reader. Although I have never used the kindle, I have used the sony e-reader and was not that impressed.

What I really like about using my laptop is that it is a computer. For example if I have a question, I can highlight a word and do a search on the web.

I doubt that most of us now will give this up for the kindle. Possibly the threat is more the technology which is here now rather then the kindle itself.

That is the good news as this should shelter us from the Amazon kindle for a short time.

This is only a delay as the race is on by Australian newspapers to decide on an e-reader. Their favourite now is the Sony e-reader.

It is an excellent choice for an e-reader. I know a friend who has one. It is a nice stylish unit. It is the size of a standard paperback. I find it well-thought-out. It is cheaper than the kindle. Most important is it open for venders to use. Which is a big plus as no Australian newspaper wants to share profits with Amazon.

I would not be surprised if the sony e-reader is what Australians adopt.

Yesterday I went to a newsagent near Cairns. While having a delightful chat with the newsagent, I happened to notice a giftcard stand sitting uselessly in the back. Where it came from no-one knew but I suspect it was from Bill Express. I was stunned and said why not use it? They replied that it was useless. I told them for no expense they can use it to sell an extensive range of giftcards. As I explained what giftcards were, they became excited about handling them but they did not have the software to do it. So clearly they need a software upgrade from us, then we can turn that stand from junk to an asset.

[Image removed]

It is amazing what just sits uselessly in the back.

The Chairman and CEO of News Limited, John Hartigan made what I thought a well-thought-out speech saying News Limited views about newspapers today and its future. It spells out where they want to go and their vision of the future.

If you want to read the speech, it is available here. {link removed}

My thoughts after reading it were that I agree with him that bloggers and other modern media are no replacement for quality journalism. Quality journalism needs money and professionals. Also, another advantage is that even if the public disagrees with a modern newspaper, they know these newspapers and reporters have a reputation to uphold, if only because they can be sued. Bloggers cannot give that! At best, bloggers are an echo to the existing news system.

He has some interesting points like the public are willing to pay for news. When we had the Victorian bushfires, many more newspapers were sold.

Today most money from news on-line is made by Google and Yahoo who pay nothing to produce it. Online readers generate about 10% of the revenue than a newspaper reader.

I also agree with him in the short-term, Australian newspaper market is strong with circulation only slightly down. Yet unlike him, I see the circulation drop that we have seen in the US and UK and not in Australia as lag, that we often see when developments occur.

He is clearly right that newspapers need to adapt their business models. By extension, so must newsagents. Interesting in his talk, there was not one word in the speech about them.

With all the doom talk about the internet destroying newspapers, the reality is that newspaper sales have held up and despite increasing internet use, substantially more people read newspapers than using the internet.

Newspapers are a good product. Here is the report {Report removed}

I decided to see how distributors overtime are handling a common problem in newsagencies of sending items that just do not sell in a newsagency.

As there is a wealth of information in posbrowser newsagency software, I decided to check this in a newsagency’s database. I put it into excel to create a unique report here.

Decide for yourself how the magazine distributors have gone. I think in 2003 they did a good job but by 2008, they were no better than 1997 in this newsagency.

Oversupply today!

The argument often heard now is that improvements have occurred in the past few years.

Well, I decided to check it. So I took a large newsagent file and ran in our newsagency software a report and then exported it to excel. Here is the chart.

As you can see, the minor titles the magazines are clearly not right unless you are talking about the very large ones circled in red.

This is what a statistician would expect. Say you sell one a week, if this week that person does not show because he missed his train they would be 100% off. Alternatively if you sold a hundred of that magazine, they would be 1% off because of that train. The more you sell, the more accurately they can predict the expected sales.

Overall much work needs doing on the low selling items.

I was doing some work for some new reports for our newsagency software that I saw overseas, I decided to check whether much changed in magazine supplies over the last year.

Here is an excel spreadsheet of what I got.

From these figures what I can see here, little happened about the problem of supply other than possibly network.

I then decided to compare the results with a magazine supplier Lovatt just because they made an effort a few years ago to look into this problem. They decided not to use the magazine distributor but do the distributions themselves.

Well here are their figures
Oversupplied 38.1%
Undersupplied 17.9%
Clearly, in this newsagency, Lovatt's have cut into their sales by undersupplying with little change for the oversupply rate. Possibly they would be better going back to the magazine distributor.

If anything happened about this issue in the last 12 months, it certainly does not show in these figures.

{images here have been removed]

I can tell you that you would not want to be a newsagent in Germany if you did not have smokes and alcohol. In Amsterdam, it is similar but they have some really interesting smokes in newsagencies.

Here are some pictures.

They do not have the range as we do for magazines. Also, their margins are lower.

They have more range in local newspapers. Note even in small towns they sell international newspapers.

MPA in America is still going strong unlike Australia.

Recently they just released their 2009/10 Magazine Handbook Released

Looking though it, I could see the affect that newsagents have in Australia in magazines. There they depend on subscriptions for 68% of sales.

Overall it is worth a look.

[Images have been removed]

It is amazing how some paint and graphics on a wall can dramatically transform a shop at a fraction of the cost of a shop fit out.

Here is one Nextra concept has just done. I think it looks much better this new sign in blue.

This is how it looks in the shop.

I do not know if they intend to run with this idea of using red and black in the front and blue in the back. But I think it looks good as it draws your eye in without clashing as the red one does.

If you want to see more details on what Nextra wanted to achieve with this makeover let me know.

Any reader here would have read for almost 16 months our concerns with the sales from weekly magazines. Many went into denial even though I had access to some of the best information in the industry through our benchmarking system.

Now it is clear we were right. Here are some people in the industry talking openly about this drop in weekly magazine sales and whether this drop in sales is structural.

To newsagents even if there is a big structural drop in the weekly magazine market, magazines are still a big market thus still attractive.

Our clients just have to be smarter and use for example the posbrowser magazine sales reports to identify those magazines that sell. As I blogged early, currently 41.6% of all magazines coming into a newsagency are expected to sell nothing.

I certainly was not impressed with this newspaper article [Link removed] on the rumour that News Limited metropolitan might become free.

I was thinking of commenting but the article was so bad, I just dropped it. I doubt any newsagents make only around $25 a week on newspapers. Newspapers are worth between 5 to 40% of a newsagent’s turnover. That is a lot more than $25.

Also although distribution revenue varies greatly in newsagencies. Many do not do it. Nor is distribution subsidised by the newspapers. It is subsidised by the newsagent. As newspapers become less important, many newsagents are rethinking on the distribution costs.

His conclusion is correct, newsagents have to change to survive. One newsagent looking though the profitabilty reports in posbrowser reported that of his 10 lines, only three were newsagency lines.

MPA in the US wrote a pamphlet for retailers for magazines. Although written for the US, I think this study makes some good points for Australia too so worth reading. It is available now.I particularly liked the comment that people feel the queues at the cash register are shorter if magazines are present.

It is a shame the Australian MPA did not produce an Australian version. Not that I have heard much from the Australian MPA in months.

Although it is very much a work in progress the current information on the new Fairfax subscription system is now available.

As always there is no change or restrictions for anyone to download this document.

POSBrowser users are automatically upgraded.

DOS users require version 3G2 or better for the Fairfax changes.

We were was looking for some publicity photographs to advertise our software in some shops. While doing a search on the net, we found this site with photographs of newsagencies almost all who are our clients.

See what you think of these shops.

{link has been removed}

I have read that in the US now in many places, law notices are no longer in newspapers but on the web.

This is now spreading to Australia. You can read an article about it. Although this article talks of the Age, many Australian newspapers do law notices.

Cardplai has been busy.

Clearly they took on board many comments from newsagents and consumers and have sent me a list of what they have done:

Removed all logos from front of cards

Increased stock quality and weight in line with greeting card industry standards.

Improved colour and graphics on cards.

Focused on birthday cards (including 18th & 21st Milestone cards)

Copy on all new cards links to music as a gift

'Thumbprint' graphics on back of all cards to help consumers understand how cards can be used as gifts (eg. 'Blondie' card highlights extensive back catalogue)

Graphics on back of card help newsagents understand they scan this code only after they have scanned code on inside of card.

Code has been reduced from 16 to 12 digits

We are also supplying a 'thinking of you' caption card to replace the 'sympathy' caption card (confusion between 'sympathy' and 'condolences')

We have also updated to the point of sale posters with the following amendments:

Colours are more dramatic and will stand out in busy retail environment

Messages focus on price point and gift

Posters include artist IP & new card designs

We are also supply 10 pocket size Cardplai 'how to' cards for newsagents to hand out to staff (we have identified that much of the information supplied to newsagents has not been read or passed on to staff, creating a situation when customers come into store and ask for the product the person behind the counter often doesn't know anything about the product).

The B2B site will be up in the next 72 hours and will act as a resource centres for participating newsagents

We will begin sending out new product, POS and training material next Tuesday.

We are currently developing a 3 minute online training video to help improve product knowledge.

The next issue of Jmag has editorial and a full page ad on Cardplai

We are also working on an instore promotion with a major instore prize per participating site.

We are also waiting on approval of a national promotion with News Ltd for late March.

To those interested in what is occurring worldwide with free newspapers, I think you will find this article informative.

One point he makes here.

2. The more newspapers rely on advertising, the
more vulnerable they are. This explains why free
papers and paid newspapers that rely mostly on
advertising (like in the US) are hurt more.

This is exactly what we are seeing now in Australia, the more a publication depends on advertising the more affected it is by the current economic conditions.

POS Solutions’ clients just picked up all the awards at the prestigious for excellence Victorian Newsagent of the Year Awards 2009 in newsagency management and operations.

This year's winner was Hadfield Newsagency and Lucky Lotto.

East Ringwood Newsagency won the Distribution Newsagent
Yarrawonga Newsagency won the Employee of the year
Morwell Newsagency the Retail Newsagency

It makes us all at POS feel good as all these people picked us.

Morwell Newsagency, I remembered immediately after it was burnt in an arson attack coming to see a depressed owner, Ray. Everything was broken, trashed or burnt. Many business documents that are irreplaceable were gone. It looked dangerous as the electrical wires were hanging everywhere so we were all so careful just in case one was live. Later it was rebuilt. When I saw it at a user meeting, it looked terrific. Clearly the judges agreed, as they awarded him the prize. Ray is shocked about winning. He said to me that he was amazed that so many people are happier about it than he is. He is just in shock.