OK, so this link and this link and this link all explain why it takes so long for a magazine subsciption to start, but there is another aspect of subscriptions that really pisses me off.
I subscribed to a magazine and was told the typical 6 weeks or so for a start date. Fine. Last week, the March issue of said magazine arrives in the mail. This week, the April issue arrived. I know for a fact that the issue currently on the newsstands is the May issue, which I’m sure will find it’s way to me next week. So, by the time I have caught up to the current issue by subscription, 3 months of my subscription will have expied—that’s 25%.
Yes, I understand that they have back issues lying around warehouses, taking up space and representing loss and the like. But why dupe me with “new subscription” status if they are just going to be sending me back issues? Is that any way to treat paying customers? If you tell me the subscription will take 6 weeks, don’t I have the right to expect that it will start with the issue that is gracing the newsstand when those 6 weeks have passed, not the issue which WAS on the newsstand when I first sent in the subscription?
Like I said, I know it’s lame. Just one of the many stupid thing which gets my dander up these days.
It’s called ‘back starting’ and it’s a thing that comes in and out of fashion. I currently don’t do it (and have the authority to do it if I so choose).
The points to it are threefold.
A) It gets a copy in readers hands sooner. The establishes the connection between the reader and the magazine faster…which usually results in a higher renewal percentage after the first year.
B) Magazine subscriptions revenue is booked on an accrual basis. Example: you pay $12 for a monthly magazine (bear with me). Each issue you receive allows that publisher to move $1 from ‘deferred revenue’ (i.e. revenue that would have to be refunded if you cancelled or the magazine folded) to ‘earned revenue’ (i.e. revenue that the magazine has performed a service to earn.
C) Nefariously, by backstarting your subscription we move money quicker to the ‘earned’ column thereby preventing you from getting it back if you decide to cancel. We all KNOW that the highest cancel-percentage is in the first 2 months. Call it buyers remorse. So if we fulfill three issues you’ll only get 75% of your money back instead of the full 100%. If we’d only fulfilled 1 issue you’d be entitled to 91.6% of your money back.
As to HOW that’s done?
It’s not that back issues are ‘filling up the warehouse’. Mostly having them around is a pain in the ass after the first month and they’re routinely destroyed and a tax write off set up.
But…
I know that when I mail a certain issue there will be X number of people who come onto the list after the day I send the list to the mailhouse. I prepare for that by printing Y extra copies and leave them in storage. Then, every week, I have someone run a list of all the recent adds to the database and have those names sent to the mailhouse so they may receive the current issue.
So it’s a matter of planning in some cases. And usually about money, I admit.
Wow, Jonathan, thanks for giving me an actual answer here. (BTW, my comment about magazines filling up the warehouse was based on what I read in the threads I marked).
In my case, I think one of the chief reasons for my annoyance is that the magazine in question contains a lot of time-sensitive articles, so getting an issue full of March stuff last week, and Easter-related stuff yesterday, just irked me.
Like I said, it’s a matter of some discussion in the circulation circles. To backstart or not? If so how far?
At one time the grandfather magazine of them all, National Geographic, used to back start people for up to a year. They insisted that it wasn’t a subscription but a membership that ran from Jan 1 to Dec 31. So whenever you signed up you got all the back issues for that year and then went forward. So if you signed up in November they’d ship you Jan-Nov…then ship you December with a renewal notice.
They’ve gotten away from that these days but it worked for them for decades (no fooling)!
Just wanted to let you know that Consumers Report back starts for the entire year. I subscribed in March and received Jan., Feb., and March all within a week of each other. Plus all the other goodies they send you for “joining.”
Hey, I just wanted to search their online database, but I did appreciate receiving the annual new car issue.
What annoys me is when publishers don’t get the issues out to their subscribers AT LEAST by the time it appears on the newstand.
One publisher I deal with was particularly dreadful at this. Issues would arrive anything up to three weeks after the newstand appearance date, which left the subscribers in a bind after a couple of weeks:
Do you assume the issue has been lost in the mail, and buy one off the newstand? But then your subscription copy will inevitably arrive two days later, and you’ve wasted $3 or so.
Do you trust the issue will finally wander in and don’t buy one? But then, when it becomes clear you AREN’T going to get the April issue, say, because the May one just arrived, it’s too late to buy an April issue since they’re off the newstands. And so much for installment three of that series you were following… Because even if you complain at that point, the publisher won’t send you the missing issue, they just add another issue to the end of your subscription.
Oh, you genuinely want the issue you had contracted to get? Well, we’ll sell you one, as a ‘back issue’ – that’ll be cover price plus $4 for shipping…
GRRRRRR.
This sort of thing happened at least four times in the first year I subbed to one magazine, which made me so angry I refused to even read the damn thing for free at the library for almost a decade.
My current hated magazine in this regard is CMJ New Music Monthly, which insists you don’t even complain about your subscription until 12 weeks after you give them the money.
The issue that causes the appearance on newsstands prior to subscription arrival is one of distribution networks.
All magazines come off the printers gear at the same time (roughly).
The one’s for newsstand sales are boxed and sent to the newsstand firm (Kable, One Source, Ingram, whatever) who then ship for display at the ‘on-sale’ date…which is typically not too far from the time they get them.
For subscribers however…
Leave the printer at the same time. Then it goes to a mailhouse for labelling which can take from a day or so to a week. Then it gets delivered to the USPS for mailing via 2nd class (periodical rate) which can take a few weeks to arrive depending on your postal zone compared to the printers location.
So, since the newsstand is a privately held distribution network they deliver it faster than the publisher can HOPE to get magazines to subscribers. I wish there was a way around it…but there isn’t.
Of course there is: print the magazine earlier (in relation to on-sale date) and have the newstand copies held for a couple of extra weeks. Simple.
Okay, I understand this wouldn’t work for new type magazines, and probably not for any magazine since you’d be stuck with storage fees or something, but it just irks me that as a loyal subscriber I am left in the dark longer than the casual buy-an-occasional-issue customer of a newstand.
What the hell is this useful, informative thread doing in the Pit anyway?
Jonathan, do you get complaints from people who actually bought the magazine on the newstands before their back issues arrived. That has happened to me and hasn’t made me very happy.
But thanks for saying why this gets done. It is kind of like forcing people to take accrued vacation.
The most common complaints I’ve received (other than missing issues and that sort of thing) would be:
Complaints that we offer cheaper prices to NEW subs than to existing ones. The rationale for this is that new subs have a much lower payup rate than renewals. Once someone has renewed once they are 75%+ reliable to continue subscribing for, effectively, forever. But someone who has NEVER paid for a subscription has a higher bailout rate and therefore requires a better deal to provide buying-incentive.
It’s cheaper on the newsstand than to subscribe. A few places I’ve worked at did this (I thought it was stupid) because it IS actually cheaper to get stuff to the newsstand than through the mails for the same reasons outlined above for delivery rates. I disapprove of the policy and don’t do it now that I’m senior enough to influence such decisions.
And in terms of just printing earlier that’s really not feasible beyond a day or two. The printer certainly doesn’t want to sit on them…the advertisers certainly don’t want you to sit on them…I don’t want to sit on them (they’re not making me money in a warehouse!)…you get the picture. The goal is to get the pubs to their final destination, whatever that might be, in the least time possible.
Wow Jonathon, you got your ESP workin’ today. This answers exactly what I was gonna ask. I got a great rate subscribing to Playboy initially. Two years for $24. Now that my subscription is running out, they are offering me a renewal rate of $18 for a year. I’m thinking “what the hell? I am the loyal reader here, why is it costing me more to re-up??” I still think it blows, but I see your point. Thanks.
Bye the way, I still haven’t decided if I’m going to renew.
This is turning into an “Ask the Magazine Guy” thread, isn’t it? Find ourselves in IMHO any second, we don’t watch it.
Anyway Jonathan, NothingMan’s post (as well as your comment earlier) reminded me of something I’ve wondered. What percentage of subscriptions do you lose after the first year? Whenever I’ve decided I don’t like one I’ve just starting getting, I don’t cancel, I just don’t renew. If I renew once then I keep getting them for, well, effectively forever. Do you lose a high percentage at that first renewal? Anything special you do to try to keep 'em?
You cut to the crux of the matter with your discussion of first year renewals. Those are such a special case that they have their own term: ‘conversion’. After the first renewal they’re just called ‘renewals’.
I normally expect conversions to fall in the 25-40% range depending on how well the product is developed. I would expect second year renewals (i.e. people paying for the third time) to be 60%+ and third year renewals to exceed 80%.
So yes, the biggest challenge any magazine faces is that first conversion. That is, the customer bringing themselves from a single-time payer to a habitual payer is the most critical step in any magazine’s business cycle.
And, curiously, that’s what I’ve been working on this week.
