A lot of magazines I read are dated one month in advance: i.e., the issue that is mailed to subscribers and made available on newsstands at the beginning of December 2005 is dated “January 2006”.
What gives?
For many magazines, that date is “display until,” not “printed on.”
Probably so that the average buyer sees it as being up to date, as opposed to “about to be replaced,” well after the beginning of the month.
Sez Unca Cecil:[
Wow, that’s pretty stupid.
Maybe they should date them three months in advance, so that people will think they’re getting news from the future.
For the same reason that 2006 cars have been sold for several months already.
On Monday I was in the airport on my way back home after Christmas with my daughter and her family. I had some time to kill, so I went to the newsstand in the airport and bought a book of crossword puzzles. The date on the cover was March 2006.
The general public is pretty stupid. It’s a good fit.
Already done: check out the date on your comic books.
Nothing stupid about it: it’s designed for the rack jobber (i.e., the person selling the magazines), not the public. They aren’t interested in when the magazine goes on sale. From their point of view, it’s much more important to know when something comes off sale, since that lets them pull any unsold copies. If it were the date of publication, they’d need to remember if the magazine was a quarterly, weekly, monthly, etc. Too much hassle for them. And since they are the most important person the publisher needs to satisfy (selling magazines is good, but if they’re not on the racks, the publisher is in big trouble).
In addition, publishers don’t know how well their magazine sells on the newsstands until they get the return figures. If it were up to the retailer, the publisher would not get that information on a timely basis, since retailers would pull magazines at different times.
So by putting the pull date on the cover, the publisher pleases the people who count the most. The readers are just not important in this context.
Think of it as the “good until” date on your canned goods.
As an actual magazine publisher (on a local level) I tell tell you why we publish our own magazine about fifteen days before the cover date.
We publish a calendar of upcoming events. The January issue contains a listing of events taking place in January. (Make sense so far?) If the issue is on the stands a couple of weeks before the month actually begins, it gives readers a chance to pick it up, read what’s going to be happening and maybe participate if they feel like it.
Think of TV Guide. The dates on the cover were the date of the listings inside, but they sure as heck have to deliver it to you before that week actually begins. . .
Also, most people like to see Christmas stuff in the December issue and advertisers like to run ads for gift shopping in the issue. But (some) readers are likely to be starting their shopping in November.
Our experience is that the reader actually holds onto the magazine longer and more folks might be exposed to the advertising inside, because they’ll pick up the magazine a couple of weeks before the month starts, but they’ll hold onto it as long as it’s “still good.”