Let's talk about traditional magazines, well-known magazines that used to do a little better, reaching hundreds of thousands, millions of copies a month, in the 90s before the emergence of the Internet, it was not a thing.

What "Reader", "Story Club", "Bosom Friend", "The Beginning of People", "Youth Digest", that is a monthly sales of several million, and the peak of "Reader" exceeds 10 million copies, because it is cheap, 3 yuan a copy, black and white printing, relying on volume, to make money from circulation.

However, there is another kind, which does not rely on circulation to make money, it publishes a loss of one, and must use advertising profits to support its own high-end magazines, such as "Watching Movies", "Contemporary Songs", "Ruili" and other full-color magazines, they are probably within 500,000 circulation, and the price is between 15-20 yuan.

But don't look at the high sales, in fact, the survival of the magazine industry is not good.

But it doesn't mean that the monthly sales of "Reader" 10 million * 3 yuan = 30 million, and the monthly sales of "Ruili" 400,000 * 20 yuan = 8 million are so calculated, the magazine has to give about 55% discount to the postal or distribution channels, plus fixed costs such as personnel salary loss and manuscript fees, 13% value-added tax for magazines, 7% for urban construction, and 3% for education surcharges.

After entering the 21st century, the twilight of physical magazines has become a fact, and it would be good to do this line of work without losing money, and around 2005, many magazines had to try their best to recover the avalanche-like decline in sales, and start from the content.

Not to mention particularly excessive magazines like "The Beginning of Man" and "Family Doctor", they are medical publishing houses, in the name of popular science, openly teach men to cut leather bags, teach women how to wear rings, and graphic close-ups of key parts, these two magazines have simply become teachers for countless children.

Let's just say that other serious popular books also like to sell dog meat with a sheep's head and play the title party.

Readers will often see the headline in magazines like "Bosom Friend", "Only when I lose is precious, what can I do to save my failed marriage", such a petty bourgeois literary title, looking at it, it turned out to be a high-imitation story of "Gone with the Wind".

Other story-based magazines will write "A pair of poor brothers who can only wear pants, the arduous struggle from the equator to the North Pole", which is talking about "The Haier Brothers".

"That Night of Madness, I Stole My Sister's Sweetheart", which excerpted part of "Cinderella", or simply rewrote the modern version of Cinderella, magazines like "Marriage and Family Happiness" did not hesitate to destroy childhood classics for the sake of sales, and it is difficult to escape the blame.

When the first batch of old-timers in the domestic media industry set a bad example, the young network media practitioners also grew up, and the younger generation secretly read the "Bosom Friend" and "Marriage and Family Happiness" subscribed by their parents at home, and grew up figuring out the ambiguous little emperor in it, and they were deeply branded since childhood.

After entering the era of Internet media, "shocked! Vicious mother cruelly abused her daughter on Christmas Eve, and grandmother couldn't bear to hook her granddaughter into the happy heaven" is so pediatric that you can see what it is at a glance without explanation.

Therefore, in this era of fast pace of life, eye-grabbing, and impetuousness, magazines may only need a taboo headline and a beautiful cover to catch people's attention in an instant, so that readers can decide whether to pay or not.

On April 24th, the May issue of Xinwei was listed normally, and the publishing house held a meeting before the end of work.

Everyone in the distribution department had a sad look on their faces, and the director's eyes were evasive, this knife was going to fall sooner or later, and he could only grit his teeth and report truthfully.

"Judging from last month's booking data, our May issue fell by 10%, and today's 12-hour first order, we did not receive a request for printing, we randomly sent 30 newspaper sales points across the country to make sampling calls, the sales speed is generally much slower than last month, and the sales volume has also decreased by 40%, the situation is not optimistic. ”

"What? It's down again?

"I'm sorry President Zong, I also want it to go up, but the general environment is deteriorating, and I don't have anything to do. In fact, since the beginning of this year, there will be an average of about 3% of the normal decline every month, but this year's May issue is particularly strange. ”

The forehead of the person in the distribution department was full of sweat, and he quickly changed the topic, opened the PPT, and projected it to everyone.

This is an illustrated table that clearly records the historical data of first booking, retrospective, unsubscription and attrition, which is available on a monthly basis.

The director clicked the mouse, and the next chart was clearer, this is the sales fluctuation chart, the whole country, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, and other second-tier cities, this is the annual sales data of different cities.

The curve is basically flat, with a slight decline, and the decline is becoming more and more obvious.

But this is a rough figure, because the sales of magazines cannot be accurate to the original, and there is no way to count, many bookstores and newsstands have backlogs, and even the postal system itself has backlogs, and the sales of each issue are different, and sometimes the proportion of unsalable products will be very large - for example, the cover model of a certain issue is too ugly, and the magazine can't sell at all, so it will be backlogged, and it will be returned when the time comes.

President Zong was a little annoyed: "The normal 3% decline, I can accept these, and magazines all over the country are falling." But why did it drop to 10% this time? Your distribution department asked if there was a reason?"

The director of the issuance department is a little timid: "This is a summary of our national secondary postal network, the postal system itself also has a set of subscription mechanism, they should start from the third, or even fourth-level retail terminals to get feedback, each point of a small number of unsubscribe and subscribe, and finally converge to the postal second-level, on the postal hand formed a conclusion of about 10%. However, we only know this conclusion, and we cannot get specific data. ”

Boom!

A few people smashed the table angrily, the postal system is like this, the postal boss can't drag it, in charge of the distribution of tens of thousands of magazines and periodicals across the country, like "Popular Software", a magazine with monthly sales of more than 500,000, the circulation can't even enter the top 100, not to mention a "Xinwei" in such a niche category of women's fashion magazines?

How can they be qualified to ask the boss of the state-owned enterprise post?

It's not that the post boss says anything, they listen to what, the other party says to reduce, they reduce the printing, the other party says how many copies to return, they pinch their noses and accept the unsubscription!

"Damn, spicy! The magazine industry will end sooner or later!"

"The above strictly controls the issue number, and the following rents a magazine number costs hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and the distribution is dominant, and the self-built channels are like vampires, a bunch of old man's corpses are vegetarian meals, and there are more than enough failures!"

"It's all over, it's all over, just the whole industry is bankrupt, don't want our paper media, it's all for the Internet!"