Magazine Store Sales

We have recently contracted with Ingram Distributors to carry our magazine in local book stores. Currently, we are in Politics & Prose, and all area locations of B. Dalton, Barnes & Noble, and Borders.

In addition, I'm working directly with two other stores to carry the current issue and see how that goes for them: Viette Nurseries (http://www.artandalchemy.com/) and a local store that showcases arts and crafts, Alchemy (http://www.artandalchemy.com/).

This week as I've been running around on errands and to various interviews for the upcoming issue, I've tried to stop in a few of the book stores to see if the magazine was in stock. I have a chart of how many magazines were sent to each location. Today I was at B. Dalton's in Union Station, where they had 8 copies of the current issue and all are sold out. A few days ago at the Bethesda Barnes & Noble store, they had 3 copies on the shelf of the 5 in their order. Certainly not a scientific study, but interesting to observe and nice to see the magazine is selling well this way.

I have started to get subscriptions from these store sales - which was really my goal - as between the service fees and extra efforts, store sales are generally just a break-even endeavor for us. We've also gotten some phone calls asking about ads from those who saw it at stores and even a couple back issue orders, all good news on that front.

What I'm really curious to see is how the magazine orders will adjust for the next issue - they have to place them in about a week or two - so I assume they will be based on the sales figures at that point for the current issue.