A reader named Mason DeCamillis writes in with a question/complaint:
Why does it take several weeks for magazines to update my mailing address when I move? I just changed my address with two magazines (on their respective websites), and both say it will take up to two publication cycles for the change to take effect. That seems crazy. When I buy something at an online store, I enter my address and they’re able to make a shipment to it the following business day, without waiting weeks for their database to be updated.
On the same note, when I originally subscribed to one of these magazines, I didn’t receive my first issue for almost three months, but in that time I received three letters from them asking me to renew my subscription. If they’re able to send a letter to me that quickly, shouldn’t it at least be accompanied by a current issue of the magazine?
Ouch. That’s a lot of bad practice for just a couple of paragraphs, but it’s hard to disagree. So why does this happen? Why is magazine fulfillment so last-century? And is it possible that these various flaws are responsible, even in small measure, for the massive plunge in ad revenues that magazines have just experienced? In an instant-gratification Internet world, are slow-footed magazines — nice glossy pages and all — helping to extinguish themselves?
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I can see the early printing of magazines causing *some* delay, but 2 cycles? No way – especially for new magazines and other magazines that carry very recent events.
Covers are frequently very recent pictures. Subscriber’s addresses are printed on the covers. So if they can get Tuesday’s picture of President Obama (or a shaved Britney Speares) on the cover of a magazine delivered Saturday, they should be able to get the address changed.
Instead, they are just being lazy and/or cheap. Either their address update process is ancient, or they CHOOSE to have a too-small set of staff to make the changes. You’ve already paid for the magazine, and you will ultimately get your newer issues, so they have nothing to lose by sending a couple to Walla Walla instead of Poughkeepsie.
The first two comments are enlightening on the process editing and printing the magazine, but I think the question has more to do with mailing labels than the actual magazine copy.
I have a copy of Outside magazine sitting on my desk, which has my address on a peel-off adhesive label. Surely it doesn’t take them 2 months to print these out and stick them onto the magazine. It seems like that would be the last step in the process, right before they get sent out the door.
Very last-century, indeed.
I just got a renewal notice two months into a new subscription saying their “records show my subscription is ending”. If this is just the beginning of the notices, I won’t be renewing.
I’m not sure that I agree (or understand) the logic that magazines are being printed two cycles in advance.
I had the exact same problem with The Economist. In the past I saw the same with Newsweek. Both are weekly and contain news/analysis from the past week’s events up to the point of publication – how can they be printed even one cycle in advance?
Hmmm – to ponder my own question, perhaps it’s the type of binding that matters? (The Economist and Newsweek use crude staples to hold the magazine together – as opposed to more quality binding used in other, larger monthly magazines).
To be more concise, why would the magazine pay their fulfillment list processor to represort an updated list, if the USPS will provide periodicals forwarding at no charge for 60 days?
From what I’ve seen so far, the addresses are usually printed separately from the magazine content, either in an empty box on the cover of the magazine (e.g. the Economist) or in a separate card bundled in a clear plastic bag (e.g. Wired). So I don’t think it needs to have anything to do with the preparation of the magazine content itself. I don’t know the status quo, but conceptually it’s seems like a straightforward process: a database of subscribers printed on the magazine right before you ship it out with the post office. If the database system are linked correctly (via the internet, presumably), a subscriber could update their address and have the information sent right into the printers. Let’s say it takes 5 days between printing the address labels to having the magazine delivered to the customer. It seems like it should take no more than a week from address change to the magazine delivered to a subscriber’s doorstep. The problem here, it seems, is the linkage between the central subscriber database and the printers. I suppose a sufficiently large publication uses a lot of printers, and setting up a just-in-time, automated subscriber address data feed from the central subscriber database to the printers takes a non-trivial amount of work and will cost quite a bit.
Also, I know it doesn’t have to take that long for a magazine to be prepared, printed and delivered. The Economist magazine I receive on Friday talks about events that happened as late as Wednesday.
Something is seriously wrong with magazine service, unless it takes 2 months of printing time per issue, updates to addresses and new subscriptions should happen monthly.
As to why they’re loosing money. I think a big flaw for magazines has been their websites. Why subscribe when I can get most of what I want for free online? And subscribing doesn’t give me any special online privileges or access.
And you have to love that they have time to send junk mail to their current customers. That’s one of my pet peeves. I hate junk mail, and getting it from my own service providers is even worse. Take your current customers addresses off of your junk mail list! I already have car insurance with you, don’t make me change my mind. Really it can’t be that hard to tell the database, that if an address appears in the customer database, don’t send junk mail for services they already have.