Entertainment For Lively Minds
Buy your magazines at Borders? Now's the time to subscribe.
The news that Borders is going into administration is first of all bad news for the 1,000 staff who work there. It's also bad news for those buyers who regularly browse its extensive magazine selection and buy their favourite titles - including this one - there. Borders has always been a great supporter of independent titles and there's no doubt we won't be the only people who will miss it.
If you are one of those Borders magazine shoppers there is one way you can make sure you keep getting your favourite magazine, saving yourself quite a lot of money at the same time. Subscribe. It comes direct to your door, unsullied and un-earmarked by the browser before and it costs as little as £36 a year on direct debit or £42 on a credit card. That's for a whole year, which, as we've noted, is a fraction of what Cheryl Cole spends on her eyelashes, Mark Ellen spends on strong coffee and one reader invests in his feet. Follow this link or call 01793 592 853. Do it now.
Bordering On Tears
This is sad news, Borders is one of my favourite shops for browsing and buying in York, I never thought it would close. A real shame.
The problem for these places...
...is that there's a lot of browsing and not as much buying as there needs to be. Retailers who are paying top dollar for space in prime high street locations find it very hard to compete with online retailers (whose aren't paying for the same kind of space) and supermarkets, who are selling books and magazines alongside food and drink in out of town locations. This really is a major change that everyone in publishing has seen coming for a while now. If you're the kind of person who used to pick up Word in Borders you're going to have to either set your compass to WH Smith, where the magazine is stocked in every branch, or subscribe.
Major change
I'm really intrigued as to whether you think that magazines are going to have to survive almost purely via a subscription base in future? Certainly accept your point that it's harder and harder to pick anything other than Hello! and its 117 variants up in stores these days.
And much as I'm aware of your antipathy towards eReading, might that not be the thing that "saves" magazine publishing?
Subscription versus buying in a shop versus ereading
Big subject. Thirty years ago the British magazine business was all about news stand sales. It was all traditional newsagents. Most men went in one every day, to buy cigarettes or a newspaper and that's often when they bought a magazine. Obviously that's changed in lots of ways. At the same time the supermarkets have become an increasingly important way to sell magazines but as anyone who's dealt with them can tell you they have lots of power and don't shy away from using it. We've been through a period where there's been a huge expansion in the number of outlets that magazines could go through. The people who pay for that are publishers who have to supply everything on a sale or return basis. In the last few years there's been a drift towards subscription driven by lots of things: internet ordering, credit cards, direct debit and men realising that they don't actually go shopping any more. However for every man who realises that and buys a subscription there are nine who just let it slip their mind.
Going to a shop to buy a magazine used to be a habit. As habits change publishers have to try to keep pace. Regularly reminding people is an expensive business for us and tedious for you. The ideal solution for us is that you decide you like a magazine, take advantage of a good subs offer and sign up once. Ereaders are likely to face the same challenge. You'll sign up for a stream. I don't think they're going to be a way of selling single issues.
Interesting and
as you say, a big subject. I'd be interested in seeing the whole thing given a bit of space in the mag, to which I'm a subscriber. To me, it's every bit as interesting as the way downloads have impacted on music.
It IS interesting
but don't spare too much sympathy for the publishers.
Magazine supply is a rare thing – a 'push' market, where the publishers decide how many copies they produce and distribute, not the shops. Equally rare, they set the price the shop has to charge as well.
Publishers, through distributors, regularly 'box out' hundreds of unasked-for magazines to retailers in the hope that they will make it to the shelf, because that's the only way you'll introduce them to new customers. As David says, it's sale or return, but the shops have to pay up front, even for the unwanted stuff they didn't order, then claim it back a week later. That's a big cash flow commitment. Anything that goes missing, or gets damaged, or was on the order put not on the van, the shop pays for. Oh, and they also have to pay to get these unwanted titles delivered.
The OFT recently investigated this market and decided there was evidence of anti-competitive activity in the supply of magazines. And even a lovely pipe-and-slippers operation like Development Hell works with a massive corporate distributor and two wholesalers with legally-sanctioned regional monopolies.
We're getting to a point where smaller retailers are wondering if there's any point giving shelf space to magazines – remember it's the publisher who sets the cover price, therefore controlling how much the shop can make – when they could use that space more profitably. But if they give it up, where do the new subscribers come from?
Until the Office of Fair Trading...
...decide they know a better way to order the distribution business, we have to work with the system as it is. Could be all the more reason to subscribe.
But
alienating retailers does you no favours. They close, you lose too.
Five years ago, I barely subscribed to any magazines
Just a couple of trade ones that weren't available on the High Street. Now I subscribe to everything I used to buy regularly.
The reason? Probably because I realised it's easier but also, I suspect, because with the move to buying everything online I just never go shopping anymore.
Five years ago I probably meandered into town on a Saturday, picked up some books, clothes, CDs and, en passant, a magazine or two. I now buy all those things online so rarely find myself passing by a Smiths.
And also...
...in most cases it will be significantly cheaper.
Plus
unless you really want a dayglo orange A4 ring-binder with yellow spots, 500 brown A5 envelopes you can easily order from Staples online, or some cheap plastic toys made in China, why would you bother with WHSmiths anymore?
because
arranging for Amazon.co.uk to deliver the Guardian to Waverley Station ten minutes before i get on a train is not as easy as it sounds ...
Well, you don't need a fully fledged
branch of WHs to buy a newspaper - what's wrong with a bloke with a barra'?
My dear boy...
"Barras" are in Glasgow; in Edinburgh we have a man who does...
Because
it employs a considerable number of people who depend on it for their livelihood?
Because it retains an element of that quaint old idea, human interaction?
Because it is one of the few quickly-diminishing links to our modern cultural heritage?
I know it employs lots of people,
I was one of them until the end of October.
Have you actually taken a good look at a WHSmiths branch recently? I mean, had a good look around rather than just dashed in for a Grauniad and maybe a sandwich in your lunch break?
The shop staff are, in the main, utterly fantastic; doing a difficult job in trying times. I've personally written to the CEO about the brilliant service I've received from branch staff at the Cribbs Causeway outlet.
Ah, yes, heritage. This is where the business may have gone too far. I sincerely hope not, but cheap (and I mean cheap) toys from China and POS advertising that SHOUTS AT YOU WHEN YOU WALK IN THE STORE have nothing to do with the WHSmith heritage I fondly remember from earlier years.
And I know what the profit margins are on Terry's bloody chocolate oranges. I never want to be asked if I want one at half price (still a rip off) every time I buy a paper. I know, it makes money and keeps the shops open, but it's as far from 'heritage' as the tackiest shopping channel you've ever accidentally watched for 10 seconds.
I posed the question because I was genuinely interested in what people thought about WHSmiths. I'm seriously glad that you still value it as a business and a brand; I know I do. I just have a few reservations about how far Kate Swann has pushed the envelope, as it were.
Sandwiches?!
I'm amazed that WH Smith sells sandwiches. They lost me as a customer when they announced that part of their record stocking policy was based on the cover art! That must have been the early 80's as LPs still ruled the roost at the time. I have no idea whether they've changed their minds since then but as soon as I found other places to get stuff there was no need to go back.
They are busily trying
to divest themselves of most 'entertainment' products like CDs and DVDs beyond chart material at the moment; there's little point in trying to compete with Amazon for the broader spectrum of tastes, and even for chart material, Tescos and Sainsburys et al are fearsome rivals.
The sandwiches are largely in the 'Travel' outlets; the business as a whole is made up of the 'High Street' and 'Travel' estates, which remain separate in some ways, though are very much joined at the hip.
Stimpy,
You need to get out more. ;-)
I've subscribed to two magazines in my lifetime, both of them folded within a month or two of my subscription.
missing you already
Living in Brisbane Australia and buying the AIRFREIGHT imported WORD from BORDERS in the CITY is one of life's simple pleasures; it will not be the same in a newsagent more interested in flogging LOTTO as opposed to culture.
Agreed
Will renew my Word subscription as soon as my reminder letter comes throught the post. Should be any day soon. I admit I do browse through Music Week in WH Smiths as it's the only place that stocks it, I used to buy it weekly, but just can't afford it anymore.
A podiatrist speaks
David, I cannot help but be curious about the "..... and one reader invests in his feet." Please expand .
Hope all is well foot wise at Word Towers
Follow the link in the post...
...and all will become clear.
David,
Please stop sitting on the fence over this subscription business. We're here to be led. SWT
I was referring to the link...
...to the thread where one reader talks about the amount he spends in a year on his chiropodist.
Where some see a crisis,
others see an opportunity :-)
Yes
there's a definite whiff of vultures circling!
here's how our man at the scene
reported it early this year. ;-)
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/the-times-they-are-a-changin-pt-67
Suspected Borders was not long for this earth
I regularly pop in their Charing Cross Road branch, and the place has been visibly deteriorating for the last few months. The fact that their escalator to the other floors has been left bust and unrepaired for over a month suggested all was not well. A lot of the sections were less than half full with books too, so I guess it was only a matter of time.
Sounds the same
as Virgin & Woolies last year. Any bargains to be had?
A couple of years ago I was browsing in a Borders near Chester, filling a basket with loads of CDs from the sale (Clash, Damned, er Muppets) when an announcement came over the tannoy that all sale items were reduced by a further 50%. Damn well needed a supermarket trolley after that.
Guilty as charged
I guess I'm precisely the kind of shopper responsible for Borders' demise. If I want, say, a new cookbook, I'll pop down at lunchtime to go through what they have on the shelves, then to return to my desk to order it for 50% less from Amazon.
Do they sell your more, errr..., 'specialist' cookbooks
in Borders?
101 things to do with Ocelot
Cook Sloth with Delia
&c &c
Hey
It's not all insects and protected species round my way, you know.
Speaking of which...
In a podcast some months ago, you mentioned you'd bought a bumper bargain bucket selection box of 'interesting' meats off the Internet.
Can you recommend a good online seller of 'specialist meat products'? I'm assuming they all taste like chicken anyway but I'd be interested in trying.
Sure
There are a couple of places I've used. One is called Osgrow - I've used them a few times. I've also ordered from Alternative Meats, who put out the recent Exotic Meat Cookbook.
Thanks very much
I've dipped a cautious toe into the water with the Australian Outback Pack from Alternative Meats
2 Kangaroo Fillet Steaks; 2 Camel Steaks, 2 Crocodile Fillet Steaks; 1 pack Kangaroo Sausage; and 1 Packs of Kangaroo Burgers
Nothing too scary in there. Rattlesnake and crickets next :-)
Rattlesnake is tough
Literally. Crickets I've done once, in a stir-fry with dates. It's great party food, but not necessarily in the way you'd like: everyone talks about it, no-one digs in.
Mmm... I can imagine
At least Eland, Kangaroo, Zebra and the like are 'steak-y' and not too threatening.
It's always good to reassert our place in the food chain!
but Fraser would you eat any of them
in preference to say a good piece of beef or well cooked tasty pork cut. Amongst you pan-species picnic was there anything that you still buy regularly?
Well...
I like the various antelope-types. The taste generally isn't far from regular beef, but tends to be slightly gamier and slightly sweeter. In the end, cost is generally the main factor, and cow is cheaper than kudu.
I was just wondered if we were missing any gems
we've been getting game quite alot recently yet to find a way of cooking phesant that doesn't leave it dry tasting.
Roo,
in my experience, is as tough as old boots, unless you casserole it for 3 and a half weeks.
What was I doing wrong? I prised it off the bull-bars really carefully.
Somehow
I imagine Fraser would do very well in the Bushtucker Trials.
I like roo
but it has to be done rare, medium to well is definitely going to be tough. Goes great with roast beetroot.
I had Giraffe
in Carnivore in Nairobi. It was stringy but in a thick sting kind of way.
Snake
I gather it goes well in a pie with some kidneys :-)
(FX: Feet disappear into distance, door slams, there appears to be a coat missing from the rail)
Croc is fabulous.
They used to do it in my local pub. Somewhere south of chicken and north of Sea Bass. Yummy.
Exisiting subscribers
I renew my Word sub without thinking and, to be honest, without doing the maths. I have never had the free CD that new subscribers get offered but I don't even check if my renewal sub is the same price as a newcomer.
In most businesses the existing customer is treated less favourably than a potential newie. Is it the case with us Worders?
Like you...
...I just sign up when prompted. However, I did do the math last time and reckoned that 3 years for £111.60 was a pretty fair deal. I note that the 'new customers only' rate is currently £36 + CD for 1 year and so feel pretty happy with my decision.
sorry Mr H
i know it's a dog-eat-monkey world out there but that post seemed a little ambulance-chaser-ish ... ("had a windfall? elderly parents just popped their clogs and left you and your foul sister a 4 bedroom semi in Exeter? maxed out your ISA? then subscribe to the Word!") ...
How much do you want
for the semi in Exeter? I've always fancied moving back there.
call it thirty six quid?
i understand i can get a direct debit sub to the magazine for that ...
Deal.
When can we move south again?
I'm sorry you see it that way
When a retailer that has previously sold a significant number of copies of your magazine goes out of business you have to take notice or watch those customers go away altogether. People don't neatly adapt their behaviour when outlets like this go away. Just ask all the indie musicians who sell less records every time a record store closes. We've got to make a living just like them.
it was...
... the segue from paragraph 1 (sympathy) to para 2 (salesy) that jarred ... or i'm having an oversensitive night ...
got me wondering about alternative distribution systems ... after all, when the Big Issue kicked off, it was no more than a generalist magazine with an innovative distribution network (homeless people who punted it on the street) ... just wondering if it would be possible to stand at a street corner and flog 100 copies of the Word in any given day taking £1 of the cover price for your trouble ... Word gets £380, seller gets £100, 100 punters are happy and you could even stick the CD in the ghetto blaster at your feet as you shout your sales patter ... obviously would work better in London/Birmingham/Manchester/Glasgow than in Durness, Chapel St Leonards or Llandovery ... and it might just sell to people who would buy it anyway at WHSmith, hmmm ... an idea that needs development (hell) ...
Wonder why
Messrs. Ellen & Hepworth don't set up stall in the foyer of a large music venue or Arena flogging their wares. Signed copies extra natch. Have your photograph taken with the Laurel & Hardy of the music publishing world for free.
just subscribe
It's the only magazine I can think of that is more interesting than the subjects it writes about.
Subscribe
then whenever you are upset with the lack of your favourite band in the mag, utter the butt-clenching phrase..."I am cancelling my subscription!"
damn shame -
I've spent many happy hours and a small fortune in Borders, Stockport over the years. The staff were always friendly and knowledgeable and I wish them well.
It was on a visit there that I discovered the Word - first issue, decent sized display in the window, Nick Cave on the cover - no brainer.
Buying from Amazon is all very well - and I do buy from them frequently, but rarely on impulse. I usually know what I'm getting. I suppose you can browse on Amazon - after a fashion, but I prefer the bookshop experience, myself.
I've also bought other magazines from there from time to time - magazines that I simply wouldn't know existed if I hadn't seen them on the shelves. I guess an awful lot of them will go under along with Borders, whilst new titles will be stillborn.
bargepole asks
what would happen if retailers were allowed to set their own prices for newspapers and magazines, as they can with cds, dvds, books,etc.
Would overall sales rise as maybe the number of outlets fell. Or is Bargepole a naive old fool who hasn't thought this through properly
:)
What would happen?
Magazines would have to take their chances along with almost every other product on the shelf. The big buyers would squeeze the pips out of the suppliers, slash the price and make it impossible for stores dealing in small volumes to compete.
You'd still occassionally buy from the corner shop if you couldn't be bothered to trek all the way to the megashed, or if you thought local shops were a community resource worth saving.
And Mr Hepworth would be renaming his firstborn Terry for a sniff of a chance to be allowed to make a living wage by Tesco.
And presumably, smaller specialist magazines would
founder, leaving Tesco et al just selling the 'top 40' magazines at huge discounts?
Fine if you want to buy Heat for 25p but not so good if you're looking for 'Vintage Synthesizer' or' Potato Digest'
Who knows exactly what would happen?
But the example of the record business indicates that sales decline in direct proportion to the number of outlets, regardless of how low the prices go.
but if
Tesco, for example, said there's a quid off The Word this month,would that generate extra sales revenue for the publisher by increasing overall sales, or would it just entail existing readers switching to buying it from there instead of their usual outlet. also ,would Tesco expect to buy at a reduced price from the publisher or do they bear the cost of the discounting themselves?
Depends who funded the quid off
It's not normally the retailer. Often, its the retailer forcing the manufacturer/publisher to fund a 2 for 1 or money off in return for stocking or even stocking an item on a more prominent place. These retailers don't make enormous profits by being benevolent and they wield quite astonishing amounts of power in their commercial negotiations. Ex retail buyers are not great outside of their industry in my experience.
I have a simple policy with regarding to buying wine
I go to a supermarket and buy whatever's on offer. Those offers are often really generous. I know from experience that they're being funded by the supplier in order to get his product stocked by the supermarket. The supermarket *never* takes the hit on anything.
Just be careful
that the reduction is a real one. The £7.99 down to £3.99 ones (and normally anything 50% off) are normally spurious, bought in specials that were £7.99 for 10 minutes in the Harlow store.
If you apply your rule to Waitrose, it works a treat.
not wanting to labour the point
but,for example,Sainsburies are currently selling the latest Dan Brown hardback for a fiver - are we saying the publisher is contributing the whole £15 or whatever discount and the supermarket nothing?
No
That's different. That's a loss leader - supermarkets will buy a Harry Potter/Dan Brown at, say, £10, and sell it for £5, simply because they think it'll drive people to the store in huge numbers who'll then spend money on other things. They're gambling that the money they'll generate in extra sales will offset the hit they'll take reducing the price of the book.
I dunno
But Sainsbury will certainly be paying far less per unit for the book than your little local bookshop is and they'll be selling it with little of no mark-up in order to get over the message that they stock books as well as everything else. According to The Bookseller there is speculation that ASDA may be losing £4 on every copy. They see it as one ingredient in a shopping trolley with £100-worth of goods inside. If the book is featured in the Sainsburys TV ad campaign they'll have got it even cheaper. I know local bookshops who have found it made more sense to buy their stock from the supermarkets rather than from the supplier.
I'll miss it a lot
If Borders fails to live on in anything like it's present form then the thing I'll miss most is the magazines. I would guess that on average I buy 2 to 3 music magazines a month and a good number of those are ones that I wouldn't have known about if it hadn't been for Borders. Sadly a couple of them, No Depression and Comes With A Smile have already ceased to be.
It was obvious that Borders were in trouble when they closed a number of stores earlier in the year and the recent CD sale was a bargain hunters dream.
The main thing about the Borders that we visit is that they're out of town and we don't have to worry about getting there at a particular time to park and can browse and drink coffee for ages.
Borders has always encouraged browsing and I assume that's been their downfall, browse and then buy at home. What they should have been doing is displaying the Amazon price next to the books even it it was a bit lower to encourage impulse buying. If the customer thinks they'll save loads by buying online then they'll wait until they get home, once they're home and find that it's the same price, they'll still buy from Amazon. I think most people will pay 50p or a pound extra if they can have "the
birdbook in the hand".If I tot up the cost of all those cups of coffee (OK... and a cake) then I could have subs for most of the magazines I get irregularly but the problem is knowing they exist.
I've not been around here for a while
and this thread probably explains why.
It really has been fighting fires for the past 12 months and a lot of excuses offering poor leadership, the internet etc have been offered up.
The biggest failure in Borders was the Chad Valley Computer System it installed just over 12 months ago.
The business became a slave to it and it just isn't fit for purpose.
If anyone wants me to elaborate, just ask.
I don't blame DH one bit for trying to convert readers to subscription.
We may survive but I have always been a massive supporter of The Word in store and it's been a very successful magazine for us.
It is of the Borders mentality that was and that ended largely 12 months ago.
I don't see the people who buy it from us, toddling down to the nearest WHS for it, they dislike the chain.
I've been in the music and book trade for nigh on twenty years, it's as bad as people say at the moment but not just because of the internet.
Recession, more things to spend money on, poor management and direction by those still standing have all assisted.
Oh and that bloody computer system.
Tim Waterstone on 5 Live yesterday.....
Heavily alluded to this computer system as one of the causes of Borders failings and that the management company treated it's UK outlets as a "51st State" of it's US operations. Waterstone was quite bullish and optimistic about the future for book publishing and retailing in the UK.
Presumably he didn't allude to Waterstones'
own problems with their new central computerised 'Hub' which is causing orders to be delayed and lost to the point where some branches aren't able to take orders for Christmas books?
Spill the beans old chap!
Who were the suppliers? Any board-level connections twixt software supplier and third party IT company? Does the stuff only run on OS/2? Were EDS involved, or was it another bunch of profiteering charlatans?
I love IT war stories, they all add grist to the mill; I'm convinced it's one of the things that is done SO badly in this country it's contributed to the downfall of far more businesses than we'd imagine.
Subscribe
This is the best mag around so don't fuck about. Get your subscription now.
If...
... I had no option, I'd subscribe ... but part of the attraction of the Word for me is remembering it's "that time of the month", seeking it out, and sitting in a pub/cafe reading it ... (i live alone so i'm quite fond of 'going out' - curling up on the settee with the Word somehow doesn't seem quite as attractive) ...
Well
that's the quote for the new subscription advert sorted:
Was at the Charing Cross branch today
Hideous. Covered in really tacky "Store closing - 20% off" flyers, shelves increasingly bare as bargain-hunting locusts stripped the old girl of her (previously unsellable) jewels.
Over the past few years I've really loved that shop (apart from the always revolting gents toilet). Great for browsing, friendly and knowledge staff, decent prices. I real bloody shame.
On a completely unrelated note, MOTD is on the telly as I type. The guys from the Football Ramble postcast are completely right - Jimmy Bullard really does have a face like a massive naan.
Don't go back on the last day
About a year ago we had threads about Xavvi closing down but the general theme then seemed to be that most people were concerned about the trend but not really that sad to see it go. The general trend now seems to be one of sadness. I was in the MK store yesterday and the emptying shelves give the impression that they've already given up (although I know it's partly because they couldn't fill them up if they wanted to. I picked up some bargain CDs but I would rather have seen them still marked as normal and know the store will still be open next time I go.
We were passing the London Colney store on the day it shut a few months ago and dropped in and wished we hadn't - it was awful and we'd spent so many enjoyable hours there.
The New Yorker
On this subject, now that Borders is going and their stock already diminished, does anyone know where one can readily purchase the New Yorker in Brighton? Or if anyone knows how to realistically subscribe to said publication from the UK, that would be great too.
I can't believe I'm doing this...
...but you can subscribe to The New Yorker from the UK for a year for $112 which is considerably less than you would be paying for imported copies. And it comes in roughly the same week. I've been subscribing for years and wouldn't have it any other way.
Borders now being used to sell tacky pottery instead
Saw this sad news story on the Bookseller site. Oh dear:
"Borders UK has begun selling its fixtures and fittings as well as a range of Denby pottery.
The Charing Cross road branch of Borders has invited customers to make an offer for a piano among fixtures including chairs and shelves. A range of Denby pottery went into the store on Friday , causing dismay among the booksellers still working at the branch. "
Feel sorry for the poor sods still working there. Talk about insult to injury.