A conversation with my newsagent

I’ve just had a very interesting conversation with my local newsagent, sparked off when I remarked on the launch of a new celebrity magazine, Famous, which he says has sold out its first issue. To touch on just a few of the most interesting things we chatted about… He says that newsagencies are a great business, and his shop is going the best it has in the nine years he’s been running it. He doesn’t believe that the Internet is taking sales away from newspapers, despite all the reports – he thinks newspapers have been selling steady all the way. However magazines sales are getting better all the time. This reminded me of remarks made last week by Bill Emmott on leaving The Economist after 13 years as editor. The magazine’s sales have more than doubled under his tenure to over one million globally. Emmott remarked that the demand for the kind of analysis that The Economist produces becomes even more important in a world of digital overload. People may prefer to get news from the Internet rather than newspapers, but they also want a review and big-picture analysis of what’s important, just as they have for decades with the major newsweeklies. Incidentally, the newsagent reports that celebrity press is the best sector of all in magazines, hardly a surprise, though it is interesting to consider what drives this in contemporary society. He also said that he was looking into selling his agency, and that standard prices are 2.3-2.7 times pretax earnings. Not bad for the buyer if it’s a solid and growing business. Would you want to buy a newsagency? An interesting question to consider. We won’t become fully digital in that much of a hurry.