More than 200 Canadian magazines collaborate in "Buy 2, Get 1 Free"promotion

If ever there was a collaborative idea whose growth was deserved, it is the annual subscription marketing campaign of Magazines Canada -- known popularly by its tagline as "Buy 2, Get 1 Free".The initiative is supported by government grants (Canadian Heritage and Ontario Media Development Corporation) and private sector sponsors with a stake in the health of Canadian magazine publishing (Quad/

Less than a buck a copy the pre-publication offer for Sportsnet magazine subscribers

With the September 29 launch date looming, Rogers Publishing is offering its new Sportsnet magazine for about 97 cents a copy (for 30 issues) to charter subscribers and, with that, comes a digital edition. (The price doesn't include taxes.)  The deal is sweetened by a soft offer of the first four issues free, with no obligation. 
Subscribers to Rogers cable and/or phone services can get the

Magazines Canada partners with Consumer Intelligence Group for annual DM sub campaign

Magazines Canada has struck a partnership with private sector firm Consumer Intelligence Group (CIG) to help run its annual Buy 2, Get 1 FREE subscription campaign. The direct mail campaign has been a prominent program in support of member magazines, but has been under some pressure  in terms of funding. The most recent year's campaign was half the size -- in terms of delivered DM pieces -- as

Postal back-to-work relieves publishers, but they need to be resolute about alternative delivery

With the resumption of mail service tomorrow as the result of an imposed back-to-work order by Parliament, many publishers will be happy that their subscription copies can now be delivered again. But the industry simply can't settle back with a sigh of relief. Even as it welcomes the imposed settlement through 2015, it needs to look at alternatives for delivery. (It saddens me to say so because,

Apple promoting and rewarding magazines which conform to app-sub model

Apple's iTunes store is having a significant impact on sales of compliant U.S. magazine brands and appears to be rewarding titles which opt into the app subscription model that Apple prefers, according to a post on minonline. There is a rotating marquee of such titles as Glamour, Vanity Fair and Bloomberg Business Week, all of which offer app-based sub models from which Apple takes a

Aye, there's the rub; Geist creates erasure poetry contest

Geist magazine of Vancouver has come up with a wacky new subscription promotion -- the Geiste Erasure Poetry contest. In it, a passage from Susanna Moodie's Roughing it in the Bush is copied. Without changing the order of the words, but erasing as they will, entrants (who pay $20 -- which includes a one-year sub)  are to create a poem out of the passage. There is no word limit. The winner gets

Expensive habit; subscribing to prime U.S. titles on the other side of the world

We may grouse and complain about the costs of print subscriptions or single copies, but in Canada we should count our blessings for not being in Australia, where a subscription to The New Yorker can cost an astounding AU$681.50 a year and Sports Illustrated $563.55. The reason is that those magazines won't even bother selling a subscription directly to readers in the antipodes. According to a

Preview of Next Issue Media digital newsstand for U.S. titles now online

A consortium of five major U.S. magazine publishers who formed Next Issue Media in 2009 have finally unveiled their "digital newsstand". According to a story in MediaDailyNews, a preview is available exclusively on Samsung's Galaxy Tab 7.0, but will be introduced as a standalone app later this year.Next Issue Media was formed by Conde Nast, Hearst Corp., Meredith, News Corp., and Time Inc. with

Hanging in with hope for settlement in the postal labour-management negotations

Magazine publishers large and small have every reason to feel nervous about the 11th hour negotiations between Canada Post Corporation and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW). Next Wednesday (May 25) is the day on which either CPC will lock out its employees or CUPW will go on strike; either way, distribution of subscription copies and vital direct mail campaign materials will be

Time Inc. and Apple make a deal: print subscribers get iPad editions free

Time Inc. and Apple Inc. have apparently come to an arrangement about serving its existing subscribers on the iPad. It was reported today from multiple sources that this breaks an impasse between the two companies that may augur well for all magazines being delivered to subscribers on tablets. (It doesn't yet solve the problem of selling new subscriptions for iPads and retaining access to

The buddy system applied to subscription marketing: Geist and Poetry is Dead

Geist magazine of Vancouver is promoting a 2-for-1 deal for subscriptions both to it and Poetry is Dead.We love Poetry Is Dead. It's the quirkiest, edgiest and newest poetry magazine in Canada. We know you'll love it too. Subscribe now for $29.99 and receive BOTH magazines. Usual sub for Poetry is Dead is $12; for Geist $21.

Get magazines cheap; rope in your friends

In a nod to the current mania for couponing sites, online agency Magazines.com is offering discount subscriptions through Facebook. For instance, Fitness magazine, which is being offered for $5 for 10 issues. According to an item on MediaPost, Using the Moontoast platform, Magazines.com is offering consumers the ability to share special deals on magazine subscriptions with their friends, with

Hearst publishing unveils new "paperless" one-stop bill and sub paying system

Mega U.S. magazine publisher Hearst (Cosmopolitan, Esquire, Good Housekeeping) has launched the beta version of a new, paperless online bill-paying system that could pay big dividends for people managing their magazine subscriptions. Manilla.com is a free service that allows people to corral all their bills, subscriptions, rewards and loyalty programs in one place with a single login, thereby

Quote, unquote: Building a subscriber-friendly device-agnostic front end

We're hedging our bets--Apple right now has the largest market share in tablet usage. Six months from now, Android and the whole Google platform may grow or it may not, or Apple and Google may split the market up. What we want to do--and it's been hard, especially with Apple since they haven't been too transparent--is make this a front-end experience for the subscriber that's device-agnostic

Subscription skidmarks longer in Canada than U.S., but single copy sales do better: ABC

A follow-up on yesterday's report on ABC 6-month data: Canadian consumer magazines' total paid and verified circulation fell 4.03%, compared with a 1.2% drop in the U.S. 
Subscription sales in Canada fell 5.9%, compared with 1.2% in the U.S. 
Single copy sales in Canada fell 6.1%, compared with 7.3% in the U.S.

It's not all that hard to subscribe to magazines in Canada, really

A casual glance at a recent press release suggested that there was a new player among subscription services for Canadian readers. Turns out, however, that Acclaim Subscriptions Canada is simply a phone and web link to a U.S. company.  The release was merely a marketing initiative by the Brooklyn, New York-based Acclaim Subscriptions."Joyce Redding of Toronto is pleasantly overwhelmed by the

New York State law requires expiry on magazine subscribers' labels and renewals

This may be of particular interest to Canadian magazines that have subscribers in New York state. According to a story in Audience Development, the New York State Assembly has passed a bill which requires every publisher of a magazine sold by subscription to include an "understandable" and "readable" indication of the month and year a subscription expires on the mailing label and on any renewal

U.S. consumers cutting back and about a third have done so by cancelling magazine subscriptions

The repercussions of the recession in the U.S. has caused many people to cut back and economize in many areas of their lives. According to a story on MediaPost, about a third (31%) said they have cancelled one or more magazine subscriptions, and 17% have cancelled newspapers. Almost half of Americans (22%) have cancelled -- or are considering cancelling (22%) -- cable TV.

Fifteen percent said

Crow Toes Quarterly offers 4 PDF copies for $5

It's nice to see little magazines, with limited resources, innovating. Case in point is Crow Toes Quarterly, which offers a one-year, four-issue e-zine subscription to its magazine (which is about children's literature) for $5. We’ve taken all those great words and illustrations and we’ve crammed them into this magical doohickey and we’ve turned them into these little files called PDFs, which can

Web is now largest subscription source for one in five magazines, MPA says

Internet subscription sales among U.S. magazines have almost doubled in three years, according to the president and CEO of the Magazine Publishers of America. In a release Nina Link said “The Web is now the largest subscription source for one in five magazines.” According to an MPA survey conducted in April reflecting the experience of 62 titles, 24 per cent of subscriptions sold by publishers (