When you place an order through a magazine subscription service, it can take from 4 to 12 (and perhaps even 14) weeks for your magazine subscription to start depending on the fulfillment cycle of each publisher. We find generally that it takes an average of 4-6 weeks for a weekly publication to send out the first issue and then another 4 weeks for a monthly term subcsription. The industry standard though for most publishers from a technical standpoint is 8-12 weeks. One of the reasons it could take such a long time is efficiency modeling and rate base flexibility. This means that publishers will hold off on starting new subscriptions until they collect enough new subscribers to add them to the rate base which they need as a circulation guarantee for their advertisers.
The time frame of delivery therefore depends on the particular magazine you ordered and what schedule the publisher follows for shipping out your first issue. Delivery of your first issue will also depend on the number of issues published per year. If the title you have ordered is not a monthly magazine, delivery of your first issue may be pushed off depending on the publishing schedule of the magazine you have ordered as some publishers do not send the current issue but wait until the new one is published.
Publishers use agencies which are called clearinghouses which receive and process orders from multiple companies who each resell many different magazines. The policy of a clearinghouse is to not consider a subscription order to be late until 14 weeks has passed since the order was placed. With our company, we adhere to this policy but at the same time we will still take some preemptive steps to ensure continuous delivery to our customer. So we advise our subscribers to contact us via our support form if you have not received your first issue within 10 weeks. If you fill out our web-based support inquiry form, these are the details you should provide:
• The name and address of the person who bought the subscription
• The name and address of the person who the subscription is being sent to
• The date the order was placed
• Magazine subscription order number
• The name of the magazine
• Whether this was a new (includes gift) or renewal order
• Copy of your confirmation e-mail
Here's how the publisher fulfillment process works:
• When you place an order with our company, we either send it directly to the publisher's fulfillment company (example would be a company called C.D.S.) or we send it to a bulk processing clearinghouse which then forwards it to the individual publisher's fulfillment center. We do processing every day of the week.
• The clearinghouse processes the orders (which they receive electronically) checking to ensure that the shipping information is valid for street addresses and zip codes. A clearinghouse can take from 3 to 7 days to do this validation and verification process.
• After validating the subscription information, the clearinghouse itself then consolidates all the orders from the different resellers and subscription agents and sends them to each publisher fulfillment center. These centers have hundreds of publisher clients and they in turn aggregate the electronic orders received from different clearinghouses and individual subscription agents for batch processing. They actually use what is known in the industry as "tapes" and electronic files and these can remain in the fulfillment center's processing queue for 2-30 days depending on their relationship with the publisher. Some publishers want their subscriber files updated weekly with all the changes (this means, new, renewal and address changes), others only once every month or two. It is this discrepancy in time that explains why one part of the chain may have the newest information, but not another. For this reason, if you call the publisher's toll free number which is generally manned by the fulfillment house calling center, you might not yet be on the publisher's file as your order may be still on a "tape" waiting to be merged into the publisher's master file.
• A little word about rate base and circulation guarantees. Publishers make money from subscriptions of course. But they make even more money from advertisements in the magazines. And publishers are able to charge advertisers based on the number of people that either subscribe to the magazine or the number of people that actually read the magazine (this includes single issues bought at the newsstand). Even though it is an extrapolated number because who really knows when a magazine is read - think of magazines in waiting rooms or reception areas. So publishers try to increase their readership by making their content as captivating as possible. The more subscribers they have - since this is a measurable quantity - the more money they can charge to advertisers. Publishers are constantly managing their rate base to keep it relatively consistent and this means they have to balance people who don't renew with new subscribers that sign on. This is why your first issue start date is staggered.
• Once the fulfillment center updates the publisher's file, it then has to print labels for the magazines. As part of this whole rate base game, some publishers do something called "back serving", which is to send you the issue just published and a previous issue. So in a sense you kind of get screwed because your subscription is ending one month earlier than you anticipated. Usually if you call a publisher they will extend your subscription by an issue. Other publishers may wait until the next issue is published which can add up to 4-8 weeks (depends if it is a monthly or bi-monthly title) to the start of your subscription. Some publishers print 2-4 sets of shipping labels months in advance to save time and money - this can result in a delay of your first issue of up to four months.
• Once the shipping labels are printed, they have to be sent to the magazine printer which can take a week or more. With the advent of inkjet technology some of this entire step is skipped as the printer can print the address right on the magazine. Traditionally thought, the magazine printer then pastes/affixes the labels onto each magazine during each print run. Then the magazines are sorted by zip code or delivery route and delivered to the postal carrier/office. This can take several weeks with some publishers.
• Now that the magazines are sitting in the mail facility, then it is up to the post office to actually put it in the delivery queue. Magazine are generally sent by Second Class Mail, the lowest postage rate, and this means that magazines can take several weeks to be delivered. Weekly and Daily publications don't get this 2nd class delay and they are usually delivered as fast as First Class Mail.
• It's not just that the publishing industry fulfillment procedures are archaic. No matter how advanced we get on our end as a subscription agent, we still cannot affect the fulfillment process. Our job is to act as an intermediary and offer subscribers a way to consolidate all their magazines under one roof and give publishers an additional way to reach new subscribers. So we do our job pretty efficiently and then afterwards it's up to the fulfillment house. But we are always here to help.
• Some of the fulfillment houses even use something called magnetic tapes on reels which has been around for decades. We even have to print out a duplicate copy of our orders on paper reports which they then use to reinput into their own systems. And the risk this imposes on your orders is huge because mistakes happen. So what should be an almost totally automated process turns into a multi-step human error capable process that just adds friction to an almost smooth process. The end result can be orders that get rejected because an address is mistyped or even worse, an order gets delivered to the wrong place. Fortunately, the error rate we experience is marginal and the quality of the companies we work with evidences itself with a low discrepancy rate. The end result is good delivery for you the magazine subscriber. We like to say that we have very few instances where we have to correct or resubmit an order.
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