The Brick Show tries to cover news of LEGO in all of its possible components – the toys, the TV shows and movies, and even printed media. Several times before, we’ve covered releases of official LEGO magazines from various publishers, like Egmont which rolls out the official LEGO Star Wars mag.
Lately however, a pilot by Egmont to increase the circulation of LEGO Star Wars Magazine is drawing the ire of newsagents in the UK, particularly Federation of Independent Retailers. This is in response to Egmont starting to stock its mag not just with the newsagent outlets but on chain supermarkets.
The sticking point to the Egmont circulation move according to the NFRN is that not only will the supermarkets receive the latest issues of LEGO Star Wars Magazine ahead of the newsagents (four weeks ahead even), but the issues then given to the NFRN retailers will only be return issues unsold from the market chains.
NFRN national president Mike Mitchelson remarked that Egmont is treating their member newsagents as second-class retailers with the preferential treatment to chain supermarkets for magazine stock. A reply from Egmont in turn explains that their pilot project is committed to “testing a sustainable distribution model in the UK independents channel.”
In this matter, LEGO is taking the side of their publishing partner, as the ompany’s senior director of licensing and publishing Andrea Ryder tells NFRN, “We have been assured the practice in handling the distribution of LEGO Star Wars Magazine will be changed to allow all retailers to have the ability to order and also to receive the magazine without a differentiation in delivery timing.”