Friday, June 02, 2006
Another Great AK Victory!!
I know some of you will have seen the announcement in the UK press a couple of days ago and my follow-up letter to the 'Independent' newspaper yesterday - we have won our battle against the absurd distribution arrangements for magazines in the UK!
For those of you from overseas, let me explain the background:
In the UK, there are just a handful of big magazine publishers (four). There are three distributors to newsagents (WH Smith, John Menzies, Dawson News) but these distributors have divided the country up into three sections - so there is a monopoly in each section. There's a very cosy, unhealthy relationship between the distributor and the publishers.
The customer loses out because magazine prices are high - so high in fact, that I subscribe to the magazines I want to buy from Spain and it's still cheaper than buying them in the UK!!
The customer also loses out because the distributors are LAZY - they will only distribute to a fixed number of retailers.
The retailer loses out because he has to agree to the terms offered to him by the local monopoly distributor. He has no choice.
Small publishers lose out because the distribution costs are ridiculous (68% of the cover price!) and also because you have to provide tens of thousands of copies to the distributor - two-thirds of which are trashed at YOUR expense as the publisher. This is because the distributor floods the retailers with extra copies to ensure they maximise sales, rather than optimising sales to production. This is terribly inefficient - a crazy system.
About a year ago, I approached one of the distributors, asking to be distributed in areas with high Arab or Muslim populations - East London, Edinburgh, East Midlands etc. I provided maps, a business plan and so on. They agreed AK Comics was an excellent publication, that the target market had been correctly identified - but they still turned me down. I was left with the impression that they just couldn't be bothered to work on the idea.
OK - fair enough - but the problem is that in the UK if the monopoly distributor turns you down, that's it - you have nowhere else to go!
I complained to the Office of Fair Trading who confirmed that they were already feeling uneasy about distribution in the UK.
And now, one year later, they have ruled that the system operated by the distributors is illegal!!
We can now look forward to an explosion of local distributors, especially in the cities, and they will be prepared to sell magazines in a great many new ways - through street sellers, pubs, schools, office buildings, specialist shops and who knows what else. Within a couple of years, I expect to be able to approach several new independent distributors - very often just one man and his dog prepared to walk the streets offering magazines to passers-by for a third of the cover price.
Small publishers like AK will be able to start with small distribution, carrying little financial risk, and then build upwards. Customers will have a much greater variety of magazines available in the street at any time.
This is the market economy the way it was meant to work - thanks to AK!
For those of you from overseas, let me explain the background:
In the UK, there are just a handful of big magazine publishers (four). There are three distributors to newsagents (WH Smith, John Menzies, Dawson News) but these distributors have divided the country up into three sections - so there is a monopoly in each section. There's a very cosy, unhealthy relationship between the distributor and the publishers.
The customer loses out because magazine prices are high - so high in fact, that I subscribe to the magazines I want to buy from Spain and it's still cheaper than buying them in the UK!!
The customer also loses out because the distributors are LAZY - they will only distribute to a fixed number of retailers.
The retailer loses out because he has to agree to the terms offered to him by the local monopoly distributor. He has no choice.
Small publishers lose out because the distribution costs are ridiculous (68% of the cover price!) and also because you have to provide tens of thousands of copies to the distributor - two-thirds of which are trashed at YOUR expense as the publisher. This is because the distributor floods the retailers with extra copies to ensure they maximise sales, rather than optimising sales to production. This is terribly inefficient - a crazy system.
About a year ago, I approached one of the distributors, asking to be distributed in areas with high Arab or Muslim populations - East London, Edinburgh, East Midlands etc. I provided maps, a business plan and so on. They agreed AK Comics was an excellent publication, that the target market had been correctly identified - but they still turned me down. I was left with the impression that they just couldn't be bothered to work on the idea.
OK - fair enough - but the problem is that in the UK if the monopoly distributor turns you down, that's it - you have nowhere else to go!
I complained to the Office of Fair Trading who confirmed that they were already feeling uneasy about distribution in the UK.
And now, one year later, they have ruled that the system operated by the distributors is illegal!!
We can now look forward to an explosion of local distributors, especially in the cities, and they will be prepared to sell magazines in a great many new ways - through street sellers, pubs, schools, office buildings, specialist shops and who knows what else. Within a couple of years, I expect to be able to approach several new independent distributors - very often just one man and his dog prepared to walk the streets offering magazines to passers-by for a third of the cover price.
Small publishers like AK will be able to start with small distribution, carrying little financial risk, and then build upwards. Customers will have a much greater variety of magazines available in the street at any time.
This is the market economy the way it was meant to work - thanks to AK!
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Distribution for comics has been hellish for as long as I can remember: it was difficult enough getting a complete run of even a Marvel UK comic when I was a kid, and the censoriousness of W.H. Smith basically put the great WARRIOR out of business in the eighties.
So good luck with distributing your comics, and cheers for busting the cartel wide open!
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So good luck with distributing your comics, and cheers for busting the cartel wide open!
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