Stack magazine idea

[Richard Bellis]

This is an idea which Sam from The Seagull Love Review emailed to us. I rather like the idea and want to set something like this up, we just need to sort out logistics.

Anyway, here is the important bit of the email: "I subscribe to a service called Stack (http://www.stackmagazines.com) which sends me 3 or so random magazines every month for £5 ... The fiver just comes straight out via PayPal and I always thought that could work really well for fanzines. I've always thought that people who buy fanzines also want them from other teams, a kind of 'if I see one, I'll buy one' policy."

I like the idea but am unsure as to how to proceed. From what I can see there are 2 main options. The first is that The EFF buys in bulk copies of 3 or 4 fanzines to sell on at a profit. This would mean that you guys don't have to worry about the fanzines after we've got them however, you'll lose out on some profits which we want to avoid whereever possible.

The second option is that once we receive the money through paypal we pass it onto you and then you send it out. That means that we don't have to carry stock and you get all the profits. However, this will probably be harder to sort out once someone buys it and also paypal will get 2 bites at our cherry.

Thoughts?

[samseagull]

maybe try [e-mail] and aks him nicely he might reveal how it works?

[Richard Bellis]

Feb 14, 2012 17:24:22 GMT -5 samseagull said:

maybe try [e-mail] and aks him nicely he might reveal how it works?

We haven't done that because that would be a good idea!

*emails*

[Richard Bellis]

I phoned Steven from Stack earlier and we had a really good chat about how Stack works and how it might work for us.

Basically they pay inbetween cost and full price for a fanzine and then sell the subscriptions at a set price. So if we wanted to use TSLR we might buy 100 (for example) at 75p each along with two or three other magazines to make up the rest of the month/quarter's order and sell the service for £6 a go. Makes sense and it also garuntees sales for fanzine owners.

There are one or two issues, namely that we don't really have the capacity at the minute to stock this kind of thing. We could do the initial sending offs, but we couldn't store them really. Any solutions?

[samseagull]

i got a Stack thing through the post on friday, excellent as usual and included a little poster which i thought was a nice touch!

perhaps the process goes something like this;

- launch the scheme with the plan to send the first batch after 30 days.
- after 2 or 3 weeks try and guage numbers, contact the 'zines and ask for X fanzines plus 10% or whatever
- send first batch out to subscribers
- EFF distributes reimbursments/profits back to zines on 30 day arrears
- unsold zines (of which, if clever there shouldn't be any/many) go on the fire
- repeat until football implodes.

Things to take into account;
- cost to 'individual 'zines to send to EFF
- cost to EFF to send each pack

I think that the zines should sell at cost price in the first instance to keep costs down, and I think a fiver is a good round price.

I imagine EFF would need support from all the fanzines to market the scheme, not to mention the wider football and magazine press.

just my thoughts.

[Richard Bellis]

Feb 20, 2012 5:50:11 GMT -5 samseagull said:

i got a Stack thing through the post on friday, excellent as usual and included a little poster which i thought was a nice touch!

perhaps the process goes something like this;

- launch the scheme with the plan to send the first batch after 30 days.
- after 2 or 3 weeks try and guage numbers, contact the 'zines and ask for X fanzines plus 10% or whatever
- send first batch out to subscribers
- EFF distributes reimbursments/profits back to zines on 30 day arrears
- unsold zines (of which, if clever there shouldn't be any/many) go on the fire
- repeat until football implodes.

Things to take into account;
- cost to 'individual 'zines to send to EFF
- cost to EFF to send each pack

I think that the zines should sell at cost price in the first instance to keep costs down, and I think a fiver is a good round price.

I imagine EFF would need support from all the fanzines to market the scheme, not to mention the wider football and magazine press.

just my thoughts.

What he said ^^^^

[popularstanded]

Though I really like the general idea of Stack, I can forsee a particular hurdle for a fanzine equivalent, in that whereas most magazines publish at regular intervals; monthly, fortnightly etc. we all work on different schedules, from 3 a season to 10 (going off the responses to the other thread)

And even with the same number of zines per season the timings vary; as an example I've set out to do six copies of PS this season, the intervals between them have been;
11 weeks
5 weeks
6 weeks
9 weeks
6 weeks

Would make a Stack type thing difficult to structure.

[Richard Bellis]

Mar 1, 2012 15:28:49 GMT -5 popularstanded said:

Though I really like the general idea of Stack, I can forsee a particular hurdle for a fanzine equivalent, in that whereas most magazines publish at regular intervals; monthly, fortnightly etc. we all work on different schedules, from 3 a season to 10 (going off the responses to the other thread)

And even with the same number of zines per season the timings vary; as an example I've set out to do six copies of PS this season, the intervals between them have been;
11 weeks
5 weeks
6 weeks
9 weeks
6 weeks

Would make a Stack type thing difficult to structure.

I understand your point and I agree that it will be difficult in some respects. However, I don't think it's an insurmountable hurdle. If we contact you in enough time (say a month or two) it should be perfectly possible to sort out ordering the fanzines and for the fanziner to have the 'zines ready. Of course not all fanzines publish at the same time, but that's fine. If fanzine 1 is ready the first week of August to go out, but fanzines 2 and 3 the second week, then we'll just wait a week.