Magazine Wholesalers Get Their Price Increases

It’s one thing to produce a magazine, quite another to get it distributed to newsstands across the country. And if the wholesalers don’t like what they’re making from that distribution then there’s trouble ahead.

And that’s why $1.99 magazines across the US are fast disappearing, some to $2.49 and some to $2.99 and it’s all so the wholesaler gets more.

Usually a wholesaler gets a percentage of the selling price. Doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that taking the same percentage from $1.99 and from $2.99 that the wholesaler is going to be a whole lot happier with the $2.99 product. And publishers can only hope that the price increase won’t crimp newsstand sales.

The one company that has been doing particularly well from $1.99 titles is Bauer, but it has finally bitten the bullet under wholesaler pressure. The In Touch and Life & Style weeklies that each sold more than 2 million copies at $1.99 are going up to $2.99. Will as many people buy? And figuring that the teens have the most disposable funds, such magazines as J-14 and M will go to $3.99 from $2.99.

To get their message across the wholesalers implemented sharp distribution cuts this year and there wasn’t much the publishers could do except raise prices and increase discounts that wholesalers also receive.

OK! Magazine that made its start in the US promoting its $1.99 price has had to raise its price to $2.99 and People this month is going from $3.49 to $3.99.

Publishers say their magazines still represent good value at the increased price, but all such increases are going to do is to drive more and more readers to free reading on the Internet.– September 10, 2007

Keywords:magazine marketing,magazine distribution

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