Bipads, you can’t live with ‘em, you can’t live without ‘em. No matter how compelling your content or how effective your cover, depending on the varying and changeable bipad tracking policies within your distribution network, it’s entirely possible your special interest publications or their parent magazines may be pulled weeks ahead of their intended shelf-life, or may never reach the newsstand at all, all because of those five numbers within the UPC code that designate your particular publication and related issues.

In order to ensure maximum newsstand exposure for your SIPs, it’s essential to keep up to date on current best practices for bipad allotment for both wholesale and specialty markets, as well as the exceptions to the rules within those markets.

First there’s the practice known as “bipad packing” or “bipad stacking”. This somewhat perjorative term refers to the practice of adding special issues onto a parent bipad, and, though it is increasingly frowned upon by Wal-Mart and some other important chains, is actually a pretty good way of adding releases to an frequency publication. You’ve got to keep some time between releases however–three weeks is ideal–so that you don’t run the risk of having both releases show up at a wholesalers warehouse so close to one another that one of them never makes it out at all.

The bookstores is where this is really getting interesting–I mentioned the Source Interlink Integration program a few posts back. We’re in the midst of change here, and we’ll have to keep an eye on what is happening.

Source Interlink seems poised to go with their Integration System, but questions remain as to its viability. Adding a third bipad to the publishing mix for frequency titles with special issues seems to have difficulties associated with it. Many publishers have solved the printer problems that used to bedevil their various versions–remember those days when your Canada copies would regularly wind up in Florida, and your directs copies in Safeway? The costs of stickering, the affixing of responsibility, the charging back, the time lost, the setting up of increasingly foolproof systems–ay yi yi, who wants to go back there?

Now printers have checks and double checks, coded shrinkwrapped pallets that are scanned on the way out, errors reduced or–who knows?–maybe eliminated. At that end.

But as the various versions with identical covers (apart from that pesky UPC code) come pouring in, will they stay unmixed on the warehouse floor? Will they survive the blended pick and pack and remain unblended, each correct version leaving for the mass market or the bookstore market as marked?

Will publishers agree to work within the system or will they give up their Levy distribution, or their Borders distribution, to avoid the hassle?

These are questions that haven’t yet been answered–but answered they will be, in fairly short order as the Source/Levy bipad integration progresses.

Magazine publishers know that there are some words that are high-impact for magazine covers. Tips, techniques, secrets, best, top, exclusive, bonus, special. Use them on your cover and you will increase your sale.

You know, for example, that one of the most effective phrases for a magazine cover is “how to.” Do you know what one of the most searched phrases on the internet is? That’s right–it’s “how to.” High-impact words are high-impact words, whether found on magazine covers, in your direct mail pieces, or in your keyword clusters.

This understanding can lead to an interesting use of the internet: as a research tool for the particular words and phrases that are currently riveting to your audience. You can run a tag cloud on your forums and see the questions and phrases that appear the most regularly; they will give some idea as to the phrases that will be compelling to a newsstand browser.

You can visit Google Trends to find the most searched phrases in your category–again, showing the hopes, aspirations, fears, questions, problems, or desires of your target audience. A powerful research tool–and fast. And free.

Newsstand 2.0 is the dynamic connection between the online world constructed entirely of pixels and the pixels-on-paper that make up print.

Lessons learned from one medium can illuminate certain truths of the other. Keyword tracking shows that words and phrases long adopted as powerful on a magazine cover continue to have strong impact online (and why wouldn’t they?). Eye tracking technology of the web supports the use of simplicity and white space for maximum impact.

Eye tracking technology tells us that when trying to take something in, the eye shifts at least five times per second, and sees essentially nothing during those shifts. It sees not every element in a complex whole but the most compelling visual elements. The web site–and magazine cover–needs to be designed in such a way that the most important features, benefits, or messages are the most visually compelling–or, as we say in newsstand, they’re the ones that “pop’”.

We do this through size, color, contrast, position, and the use of white space to isolate the important elements. Both the web page and magazine cover need to contain many packets of information, and they need to convey it fast. At the newsstand the browser might scan your cover six to eight seconds–and the eye might be jumping, effectively blind, 40 times during that period. Surrounding the key points with enough white space to visually mark them out is one technique in effective cover design.

Eye tracking technology is a wonderful thing. Employed as part of web usability studies, the findings point to best practices remarkably similar to those we have long used on our newsstand covers.

Newsstand people have long told publishers that the most important features and benefits on the cover needed to be put on the top left. The reason given? That is the small section of the cover that can reliably be seen regardless of how the magazines are fanned or stacked.

Now eye tracking tells us that this is the area on a page–on a website, at any rate–that the eye goes first, the area that the rapidly moving eye is most likely to see information. The place to put your page identification, your chief benefit, your action point–whatever it is that the user should see first.

Who knew that the newsstand would lead the way in the world of the web? I’m going to christen the new world “Newsstand 2.0″ (I’m convinced no one got to THAT one before me, however many 2.0s there are in this cyber world of ours…remember this, posterity!). And I’ll continue to weigh in on it in coming posts.

I heard today that Host, one of the most important airport retailers for magazine publishers, is changing its magazine supplier from Anderson News Company to the News Group.

What does that mean to the rest of us? It seems like a further weakening of Anderson’s hold on its distribution territory, already compromised by the loss of a number of agencies and retailers. It changes the route density for the ANCO trucks–fewer retailers to deliver to in the Host servicing areas.

For publishers for whom Host is an important part of their distribution, it will change the profitability formula at the Anderson agencies. A different efficiency requirement or revenue contribution per copy might be called for.

There are some publishers for whom the major portion of distribution is airports and other high end accounts. Will these publishers be able to keep their distribution in ANCO’s agencies?

This development can be added to the list of things we need to be watching as the newsstand landscape continues to change.

In the world of magazine publishing, where the rate of change accelerates every year, the rules for launching a magazine or special issue just changed. Again.
 Is it the Wal-Mart bipad cleansing I’m talking about? No—that’s old news.
 The ANCO or News Group cuts? We’ve weathered them already.
 The pending Borders bankruptcy, cash infusion, or re-organization?
 There’s something more current, more relevant, and more immediately urgent than even that.
The Source Interlink Integration Program is something brand new, and it will affect your publishing plans this year.
Source Interlink’s Integration Program is the approach this growing distribution company is taking to blending their mass market (Levy) and specialty distribution (IPD) systems.

It will require you to think carefully through your bipad strategy. You might want to add a special issue or try a launch on a parent bipad in the mass market channel. That will enable you to test a new product on an existing distribution.
In the bookstores, as you no doubt already know, you will have to present a new bipad. The bookstores will not allow a special issue to share an on sale period on the same bipad with a parent title.
And now, you’ll have to add a third bipad to the mix: a Source-only, “unstacked” bipad for the parent title, no specials used on it anywhere.
You shouldn’t be impossible, or even unreasonably difficult. It just requires a plate change and a little more care in planning your bipad strategy and keeping your bipads straight. But it’s something to remember as you plan your product line for the coming year.

We’re starting up the single copy sales blog. Expect lots of new posts soon.