Friday, January 18, 2008

Wal-Mart generates "more than 20 percent of all retail magazine sales in the US"

Interesting because I'd guess that 99% of the people who work for those magazines wouldn't be caught dead in a Wal-Mart.

Now Wal-Mart "is tossing more than 1,000 magazines from the racks in its stores, sending yet another shock wave through the battered publishing industry." Go ahead and giggle about the Robb Report getting cut—so did Boar Hunter!—but this is the surprise to me: "One of the biggest corporate losers appears to be Meredith Publishing. Its flagship Better Homes & Gardens is out."

Meredith Publishing? Aren't they a success? Didn't BHG just win AdAge magazine of the year? Don't Wal-Mart and BHG have a licensing deal for a BHG product line? They do! What happened?

ADDED: Of everything I've read, Gawker commenter OBIETRICE is the only person who actually tries to explain: Meredith "took off-sale copies and sold them at discount retailers, violating Wal-Mart's decree that they get the lowest prices on all their products. Now it's payback time!"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gotta make room for Pit Stop Insider.

Anonymous said...

(NOT, that I’m profiling or anything.)