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Magclould needs to tell publishers who bought their mags
I think its vital that we -- as publishers -- get the contact information of who orders from us. I like to send my clients a thank you. I follow up with them. And from my point of view, I want to know where they heard about me. All of those allow me to do a better job. We're working with one arm tied behind our backs. Please make this top priority.
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The company has this in progress.
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As a buyer, I would be reluctant to purchase an issue if, in doing so, I gave the author personal information such as my email address. I think that as a buyer of a magazine posted in a public forum such as MagCloud, I should be allowed to purchase an item without providing this information. Just as in a bookstore, I do not give the author of a book I buy access to my email address, phone number, street address or mother's maiden name. If the author of a work gives me a reason to initiate contact them, then that's fine.
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Inappropriate?As a buyer, I would be reluctant to purchase an issue if, in doing so, I gave the author personal information such as my email address. I think that as a buyer of a magazine posted in a public forum such as MagCloud, I should be allowed to purchase an item without providing this information. Just as in a bookstore, I do not give the author of a book I buy access to my email address, phone number, street address or mother's maiden name. If the author of a work gives me a reason to initiate contact them, then that's fine.
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Inappropriate?Architecton,
Even though I posted the original comment, I have to agree with you. That's a great point. However, it would be nice to at least give the buyer the option to be contacted by the publisher. At a bookstore, I have "frequent flyer" points and I therefore look forward to getting correspondence from them. So, I'll meet you half way.
Good point.
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?This discussion sounds like one of our team meetings :-). We're trying to figure out how to walk that fine line, protecting privacy rights yet enabling the publisher-reader interaction where it's desirable. It's tricky, but we think there are things we can do. We love to hear your ideas on this, so thanks!1 Comment Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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I think if there was an option for the buyer, it would take care of the whole thing. Being that my background is in customer service and marketing, I really want to be able to thank my subscribers and -- if they're interested -- give them other things they might want. I think that's a service to them.
And, quite frankly, it's an opportunity for me (and MagCloud) to increase our base. I'm not advocating spam by any stretch of the imagination, just good service. -
Inappropriate?The reference to a book store clouds the issue, I believe, although it initially seems compelling.
A book store essentially purchases the book from the book distributor, who represents the book publisher. The book publisher essentially pays the author for the work that it then produces, paying either with an advance or on sales or both.
Here, it is reversed. It is a little more like a vanity press operation.
Here, the publisher is paying the printer to produce something and send it to his/her (the publisher's) customer. In that sense, the printer never "owns" the product. The printer is serving as the manufacturer and logistics company, and possibly the marketing agent as well.
I would think that in either of those three roles -- manufacturer, logistics company or marketing agent -- MagCloud would gladly provide contact information.
I have been in the publishing business for several decades and if my commercial printer told me someone had walked into their printing shop and wanted XX copies of one of my publications, my very first question would be: Who are they?
MagCloud would be doing a great service to its customers -- the content producers -- to provide this information. In a sense, it is difficult to justify keeping this information and not sharing it?
The benefits to MagCloud are obvious: If the publisher can better identify the types of people or companies purchasing the product, he can better market the product, make more money and need more copies.
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I firmly believe that sales -- done ethically, with the buyer in mind -- is the ULTIMATE form of customer service. How can I serve my customers if they do not have the option of letting me know who they are? I agree with Ken. The problem of privacy (although now made somewhat moot by Ken's comments) can be addressed by an opt-out or opt-in box.
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Inappropriate?I publish a magazine that is sold via subscription, so for magcloud to work for me, I'd need to know who ordered the magazine, so I can assure they receive their entire subscription.
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One other point that I'd like to add. I've had several people ask me how to subscribe and I've had to embarrassingly say to them (with toe in sand), "Um, uh, you can't unless you do it through me directly." Overall, I don't mind that because I can get their contact info, etc. However, I'd be much happier if they could do it on line and I could follow up with them and make sure they're getting everything they need.
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Hi Scott, just wanted to let you (and everyone else) know that we're listening. Our trick here is to prioritize and implement all these feature requests without you guys thinking we're ignoring all the wonderful suggestions you're making :) On the subscription front, we've decided to do this in phases. The first step being worked on now is to allow you to do a push distribution. This means being able to order and send an issue to multiple recipients at the same time. For those of you managing subscriptions directly, this will allow you to fulfill these subscriptions through MagCloud much more easily. Moving to MagCloud managed subscriptions is a little trickier, and would require us to manage subscription financials as well. We've received a lot of feedback suggesting that many publishers would rather handle this directly with their customers, but we're also aware that many of you without existing subscription management in place would like MagCloud to do this for you. So we're still in 'listening mode' on this one, and would appreciate your further thoughts.
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I think the "push" thing is a good start. Of course, what started this whole discussion was me wanting access to who's buying my magazines so I can notify them when the next issue is available. THAT -- at least IMHO -- is the MOST important thing I'm looking for. If I have their contact info (provided they want me to have it); I can notify them when a new issue is published. It's not quite a "subscription" as they'd have to buy each issue, but at least they are informed.
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Hi Andrew, is there any kind of time frame you can give on the "push notification" feature? This would be such a great feature. Thanks for your help!
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Inappropriate?OK, so multiple different possibilities here:
1. Zero information. Nada. just a count (356 copies ordered).
2. Full information. CSV/RSS/XML/dump of all purchaser information.
3. Something in-between. Anonymized demographics. (dates ordered, ZIP codes/cities shipped to, Internet demographics, etc.)
Don't bookstores and magazine stands have to report the number of copies sold vs. destroyed? Even in that model, you get a count and a rough region (based on the location of the store). -
Inappropriate?I think the opt-in/opt-out box is great. If a way is created for publishers to send magazine updates to previous customers when a new issue is created that could also be a help.
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Inappropriate?Additional idea about why it's good to get subscriber information. I do regular surveys with my clients in other areas. I would find it very useful to be able to survey my subscribers (using polldaddy, surveymonkey, or constant contact) to see what they liked, what they didn't, how I could improve, etc. It would only be taken by those people who want to -- but it would allow me to provide better content and grow my magazine while serving my clients better.
Just a thought...
I’m excited about it
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Inappropriate?This policy would be a barrier for me to publish. It defeats the purpose of on demand printing. The holy grail for a publisher is delivering a targeted demographic to our advertisers. If you can't know your customer you can't justify and ad rate!
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Inappropriate?Just wanted to clarify our current intent. We are planning on starting out with a feature to enable publishers to message people through the site who have bought their magazines (and opted in to receiving messages directly from the publisher). This will allow publishers to interact directly with buyers of their magazines, and request direct contact information as appropriate. Moving forward we are also looking into ways we can aggregate buyer information for publishers, as well as streamline the sharing of contact information between consenting buyers and publishers. We hope to have the first phase above in place within the Summer timeframe, but will be aiming to have this in place quicker if we can. Lots of other requested features vying for our attention too, including support for longer page counts, coupons, more countries, a revampted and simpler publisher UI and a public API, among others :)3 Comments Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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The first assumption that HP made -- and I admit I am making an assumption that HP made an assumption! -- was that people who purchase a magazine about a topic that is of interest to them don't what someone knowledgeable about that information, in this case, the publisher to know who they are.
In my nearly 30 years in the media business, just the opposite is true.
So, what you are creating is a business model where you are restricting the ability of your customer (the publisher) to succeed, and thus limiting your ability to succeed, based on an assumption that in this age of enormous transparancy and social networking, someone interested in information wants to be protected from the source of the information.
Let's take it from a worst-case scenario. Someone purchases a magazine on Topic X because they are interested in this topic. The publisher, armed with the information on the purchaser sends an email and calls, mails a letter, etc. When there is no reply, the publisher tries again. At some point, the purchaser will either tell the publisher he/she is not intersested or the publisher will give up. Assuming still a worst-case scenario, that the purchaser is really irritated, my guess is that anger will be directed at the publisher.
My point: Trust publishers to understant how to interact with their clients. Let's say in the above case, the person does contact HP. You could at that point let the publisher know of the complaint and choose to issue a warning or restrict access to sellers.
Let's now assume the best-case scenario. The customer and publisher actually engage and build a relationship that strengthens the need for the printed product HP is trying to sell. In fact, once they learn more about the publisher, they tell others about it and, virally, the need for more copies is created. Win-win-win.
(And Andrew, I know you are busy: You still owe me a quote related to larger press runs (smile)) -
I hate to be stupid, but what is an API? I've seen the terms more and more lately but can't seem to lock it down. And how would it help my magazine?
Thanks. -
API stands for 'Application Programming Interface' and is a way for 3rd parties to access a service programmatically (vs through a website). I'm not sure this would help your use case, but we've received a lot of interest from other folks about providing access to our services this way.
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Inappropriate?Agree! We definitely want to connect publishers and buyers/subscribers and see the value, and that is exactly what we are working towards. Re-reading my post above I see I've used the term 'opt in'. As it relates to that particular point, maybe it might be more accurate to say 'opt out'. With a responsibility to support everyone's right to privacy, we feel we also need to provide a way for buyers to 'opt out' of having their contact information passed on to publishers, should they not want this. Also please note that this specific approach relates to one-off magazine purchases vs ongoing subscriptions (when this feature becomes available). For the latter, as with today's magazine subscriptions, there is an implicit expectation built in to the business model that publishers need to know subscriber contact details, and I don't see any reason for us not to follow this convention too. Anyway, great discussion and REALLY appreciated here!
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Inappropriate?What's the update on our idea for publishers having communication with their subscribers? Four months ago (per above), we were told changes were coming. I'd really like to see this move to the front burner as this thread has been going on for quite some time.
I’m somewhat annoyed
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Inappropriate?Scott, we're hearing you (and the others on this thread). This is still on the roadmap. Our primary challenge here is prioritizing this against all the other requests we've similarly been getting. We've been focused on a number of significant updates to the site over the last 5 months or so including a new Publish UI, upgraded paper stock, longer page counts, sitewide buyer discounts, bulk discounts for publishers, a streamlined checkout, and better help/documentation. All focused on helping make the publishing and purchasing processes easier and more affordable. And almost certainly there's a lot still to be done, including the topic of this thread And we do hope to get to this soon, we just have a few other things we are currently focused on first, including supporting European shipping, push publishing (as described above), tools and widgets for publishers to more easily promote their mags, and more detailed sales info for publishers. However, providing a mechanism for publishers to message with purchasers of their mags is close behind and moving up the list. I hestiate to provide timing because it's hard to guarantee, but you should start seeing this functionality appear on the site within the next 3 months or so. Thanks again for your patience on this and your support for the service, very much appreciated.
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