Distribution Challenge

Some of my other distribution schemes were less successful. I got the bright idea to drop bundles of papers where teens congregate – coffee houses, music stores and so on. Tower Records agreed to put a stack next to the weekly alternative papers. After a few days I checked to see how many copies were left and to my surprise they were all gone. Wow! This was the answer, the best way to get the paper into the hands of teenagers.

I thanked the guy behind the counter and he looked at me as if I spoke a foreign language.

“I throw all the papers away after a few days, they make a mess,” he said. “Anyway, you drop a new bundle every Thursday.”

“No, no,” I protested, “we only publish six times a year and the manager said you’d keep them here for a few weeks. We’re not L.A. Weekly. What happened?”

“Which manager, the day or night guy,” he said with a blank expression.

I had the same bad luck with the coffee houses, tossed out at night along with the dirty paper cups and stirrers.

Then there was the time an outside distributor dumped 3,000 copies of our paper at a school that had ordered 300. The 2,700 copies that nobody wanted ended up in the trash. Sob.