Why is it that when one subscribes to a magazine, the first issue arrives in “six to eight weeks”? I wonder understand if it was a bimonthly magazine and they had run out of the most recent subscription copies, but plenty of monthly publications do this too. One misses an issue, even after subscribing.
In addition, when you opt-out of their irritating emails, they say that your request “will take effect within a week.” Search me, but aren’t database changes instantaneous?
Amazon and plenty of other high-volume retailers manage to ship merchandise within 24 hours of the order. What’s wrong with magazines?
Magazines usually contract out their subscription orders to a clearing house. That clearing house then compiles the changes / new orders, gives it to the magazine, who gives it to the printer printing the mailing labels, who applies it to the issue, then gives it to the post office, who delivers it at fairly low priority. Issues are printed and labeled weeks in advance of the publication / mailing / newsstand date.
Wait for the mail to be routed to the new subscribers office.
Wait for the person to process the request, which might be a manual, physical process of taking the card and walking it around the building a few times.
Wait for the next batch of mailing labels to be printed for the next batch of magazines to be printed.
Wait for the labels to be applied to the magazines.
Wait for them to be mailed to you.
is the kicker. If they get your request processed the day before they print out the next set of labels, you will get that next magazine as quickly as possible. If they get the request the day after, it’ll take as long as possible. They print the labels out a week or two in advance, so four to six weeks makes sense.
Unless you want the person in the new Subscribers office to add:
5 a. Make up a label for you, manuall.
5 b. Go to the stock room and get a copy of the most recent magazine.
5 c. Get a mailing label for it which is probably much more expensive than the standard bulk mailing price.
5 d. Drop it in the mail to you.
All four of those last ones cost the company extra money they don’t need to spend, traditionally.
Good answers and both true. Clearinghouses do add time to it for a number of reasons. Toss in the way circulation lists are cut from the database and extra time is added.
Subscription Agencies (clearinghouses, if you like) often function at a discounted rate to bring new subscribers on board. But, since they’re not the actual publishing house there’s usually some sort of system whereby they transmit all orders (address and billing info/payment arrangements) electronically to the fulfillment house once per month for a monthly magazine. That house then attempts to bring the data into line with the circulation database. If all goes well you’re in! Woot!
Also impacting delivery is the fact that often it’s 4-6 weeks prior to an issue being printed for the list for mailing to be cut from the database. There are many reasons one might cut different ways. Some will be on their last issue and get a 'last chance to revew!) cover. Some might get an alternate cover for whatever local reason or advertising purposes. Some might get the 'Welcome Aboard New Subscriber insert. Whatever. But these things take time. And because of that there’s a good bit of work making sure the stuff gets to the press and the staff is aware of what they have to do and the schedule for the drop.
You’re right, there is no more excuse for this.
In the 30’s when subcontracting of magazine distribution started, all entries were typeset by hand and printed well ahead of the issue.
Now, the labels are printed a couple of days ahead at most.
In fact, for bagged magazines like Playboy, there is no label. The address is printed after the issue is in the bag, so changes could probably be entered at the last second.
But my subscription lost me two issues the last time I moved because they couldn’t get their act together (I’d given them one month’s notice, so they stalled 3 months to make the change). They credited me, but it was still a pain. Once I found out the issues would not arrive they were no longer in stores.
I can’t think of a good excuse for it either.
If I go to the website for Newsweek, subscribe online for a years subscription, and pay by credit card there’s really no excuse to why I should wait any longer than 2 weeks.
A lot of magazines don’t even use labels. There’s a white spot the magazine, they run the magazines through a machine, and they print addresses directly on the magazine from the database.
Agreed. I recently subscribed to a monthly magazine online and paid using a credit card. It took more than 8 weeks for the first issue to arrive.
And strangely, I have been getting issue of other magazines delivered as well, ones that I did not subscribe too. I presume this is a marketing gimmick, where they are hoping that I might like one enough to subscribe. Or is it perhaps simply a way to inflate their circulation figures?
Several of the solutions presented have been based on an assumption that it should be a simple matter of dropping some data into a file and letting the system handle it.
Unfortunately, magazines tend to run at very low profit margins (and clearing houses run at lower margins, still), and there is neither the funding nor the incentive to invest their fragile profits in better programming.
The customers are well aware that it will be “six to eight weeks” so there is no pressure from that side. (People who subscribe to a magazine rarely choose a magazine for its prompt change of address service. How many people would actually base their choice of Time or Newsweek on the swiftness of the delivery of the first issue rather than on the perceived content? How much less so when the choice is between Beads Today and Current Beads?)
Having watched a magazine publisher from the inside of a data center, I have seen them invest heavily in not much of anything. Circulation analysis is more important to them than initial distribution, (since proving to advertisers that they are getting some return on their investment in order to prop up advertising rates is far more important to the bottom line than getting any individual magazine into the mail), and they often do not have the IT funds to keep those systems updated. (Many magazine companies publish multiple magazines to keep a supply of cash coming in and the systems to track the circulations of multiple products by individual advertiser are absolutely labyrinthian. A change to the process of any given magazine has a direct impact on all of them, since any code that is shared must be inspected to ensure that changes for one do not have a negative impact on sister magazines and any code that is not shared must be implemented individually for every magazine and tested to be sure that it produces the same results for each magazine.)
When I subscribed to MacAddict several years ago, they sent me the current issue (that I’d already bought on the newstand) and resumed there. The credited me an extra issue when I complained that they were too fast. I think Cook’s Illustrated (semi-monthly) didn’t make me miss any issues either when I became a subscriber.