What is a newsstand's average retail markup on newspapers and magazines?

January 1, 2012 12:47 PM

What is a newsstand's average retail markup on newspapers and magazines?
posted by markcmyers to Work & Money (8 answers total)

Newspapers and magazines usually have a price listed on their covers, which has nothing to do with any decision the newsstand makes. Not to say that there isn't a mark-up, but I'd think it's more determined by the publisher than the newsstand - the newsstand probably gets a regular shipment of however many issues and pays a certain price for the lot, and whatever profit they make on the deal is in the difference between that and the cover price and how many copies of a certain issue they sell.
posted by LionIndex at 1:03 PM on January 1, 2012 [1 favorite]

Yeah, publications usually have a cover price. So it's not markup; what you want to know is what percentage discount, on average, newsstands and other sellers of periodicals get when buying from the publisher or a distributor.
posted by limeonaire at 1:37 PM on January 1, 2012

Also, as with books, there are often return agreements on periodicals—those magazines that aren't sold, for instance, can be returned to the publisher or distributor (usually it's just the cover that's stripped and returned) for some amount of money back. So that also figures into the economics.
posted by limeonaire at 1:42 PM on January 1, 2012

There is also Retail Display Allowance—money paid by the publisher to have a magazine displayed in a prominent position on the news rack.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 2:23 PM on January 1, 2012

Well, magazines have a cover price, yes, but if the magazine is imported into another country, the price is often greater than the cover price (adjusted for exchange rates).

For example, the British version of GQ sells for $10 or so at the newstands in NYC that sell it...
posted by dfriedman at 3:15 PM on January 1, 2012

I used to order independent magazines for a small record store through a distributor. We paid less for magazines we ordered more copies of, so there was a lot of variety. The markup was a buck or two, as I recall. (This was in the early 1990s.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:40 PM on January 1, 2012

Not very much. I used to get 15 - 20% of the cover price() 10+ years ago. Most newsstands and magazine sellers get magazines from a distributor, who drops them off and picks up unsold magazines.
posted by theora55 at 9:46 PM on January 1, 2012

In the absence of solid information from someone in either side of the business right now, I believe newspapers and magazines average out to cost the retailer about half of the price printed on the item, considering allowances and discounts and returns. So their general markup is 100% if the printed price is charged. Some retailers discount the magazines 10% or so normally or as a benefit of their membership card, so their markup figures lower. Many mass market magazines can be returned for credit, but not all. Specialty niche magazines usually can not be returned for credit.

Note that a good standard bookstore retailer generally stocks, for an unsold-creditable title, 2x the number of issues that it sells on average, and the remainders are returned for credit when the next issue is stocked. Restated, if the particular store normally sells 15 copies of a title in a month, it will stock 30 anticipating to return or get credit for 15. That average of 2x is another story. Small stores and convenience stores may get fewer copies, a different multiple of anticipated sales, and that's part of the other story.
posted by caclwmr4 at 10:16 PM on January 1, 2012