Re: Issue arrival times (2 messages) ERCELAA@ctrvax.Vanderbilt.Edu 02 Aug 2001 19:31 UTC
2 messages: 1)_____ Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 11:24:37 -0400 From: Dan Tonkery <tonkery@MINDSPRING.COM> Subject: Re: Issue arrival times (3 messages) There has been several good comments on the arrival times and I just wanted to add a few thoughts. First as Susan Davis stated, the subscription agents have nothing to do with your shipment of the popular titles. All agents send the orders to a fulfillment center and that organization enters the data into the mail list system and labels are sent to the printer of all subscribers both individual and institutional. Now the printer is usually a contractor that prints the issues and then sends to another contractor for mailing. The mailing house organizes the mail and send out the issues in batches that are arranged to get the best postal rates. The mailing and wrapping process can take several days with the larger subscriber titles which can be in the millions of copies. So if anything your region should get the issues at about the same time depending on your campus mailing operation. Now all of the issues that you see at the newsstand and supermarket are printed and distributed a week or more in advance as these are the retail issues and they hit the street days before the subscribers. They are sent to the distribution centers in bulk without any labels etc. The first 5 million copies go out to the retail channels long before the subscriber list is printed and serviced. The entire process can take more a week to complete. The printing process is a factory environment and the first copies out are sent to the retail channels. So you are going to see issues of popular titles on the news stand and at your supermarket a week or more before the library gets their copy. The mail system to get a single issue to the home is faster than mailing to the University Library due to the campus mailing operation. So in summary the newsstand is going to be a week ahead, the home two or three days ahead, and the library almost the last place to get the issue. Using a agent or going direct will not change the delivery cycle. There is no penalty for using a agent. Agents for the most part are not in the mailing process unless you are international and have contracted for a freight forwarding service. Agents do send thousands of issues to foreign libraries where the local mail system is slow or inefficient, but in the US market all agents sent the orders to the fulfillment center and the publishers never see the order or the issues that are mailed. It is all handled outside of the publisher's office. 2)______ Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2001 14:54:16 -0400 From: Dani Lichtenberg <p005386b@pb.seflin.org> Subject: Re: Issue arrival times Thank you all so much for your responses to my recent..."opportunity to provide excellent customer service!" I especially like the point that newsstands receive bulk shipments of magazines which do not have to be labeled. It would make sense that these may arrive somewhat before personally labeled issues. In addition to your responses, I did a little bit of research of my own. I called EBSCO and got the skinny on how magazines get from the publishers to the subscribers. Each publisher uses a fulfillment house to distribute its materials. The publisher decides which house to use (the library does not decide this, as my patron seems to believe!). The publisher also contracts with the US Postal Service, to guarantee what date to deliver its materials. This is called a "late date." If each monthly magazine had to arrive at the subscribers doorstop on a certain date, the US Mail would be swamped! So there is a final date by which delivery must be made, which differs for each publication. Any receipt time on or before that date is considered acceptable by the publisher. The "late date" for my patron's SmartMoney Magazine, I discovered, is the 3rd of the cover month. We received the August issue on July 12, so that is well within acceptable parameters. Hey, as a Serials Librarian I should have known all that. So this was quite the learning experience for me. I also double checked some of our receipt dates with other libraries (using the Innovative Interface feature recently under discussion) and find that our issues are being checked in within two or three days of many other libraries. This would not be of too much interest to my patron, however, since he feels that libraries receive issues well after individual subscribers. I don't know how to check when individual subscribers receive their issues, besides polling fellow staff about their personal subscriptions, and I don't know any who subscribe to SmartMoney or Fortune! So...a very interesting exercise. Dani Lichtenberg Palm Beach County Library System p005386b@pb.seflin.org