Well done to The Economist for setting up what appears to be a first among mainstream publishers, by allowing punters to order a single copy of the title with just a few clicks of the mouse.
I've just logged on to Economist Direct and ordered a copy of tomorrow's edition, meaning I'm now set up to do the same thing in future simply by going online or, even more conveniently, texting "buy" to 80801. Postage is free, purchasers just pay the cover price. My one initial complaint is that the only title options on its registration system are Mr, Mrs, Miss, Dr and Sir. Thus riled, I selected Sir just for the hell of it.
Must try to find out how the back office fulfilment side of this is handled, and by whom, the service is in beta at the moment which will allow them to gauge likely demand.
Coincidentally a chum forwarded me a link to Songlines magazine the other day for the very same reason, as he was interested to see that it was possible to buy single issues, and back issues, via its website too. This world music title has some sort of tie-up with Amazon which means it gets traffic via Amazon music recommendations. It's very much a specialist niche mag, though, and the Economist's new service is the first of its ilk that I know of to be targeted at more of a mass market.
I imagine such a service will be welcomed by readers and potential readers - it puts me in mind of when Wired launched in the UK, and I wasn't quick enough off the mark to get a copy from the newsagents. After a number of fruitless shuffles around a variety of retailers' newsstands, I gave up. If I'd been able to do something similarly straightforward and order the mag via the Wired website, that would have been most marvellous.
Like News International's super-convenient courier delivery of newspapers, this is exactly the sort of thing publishers need to be doing to protect and/or grow their hard copy sales. Surely with the right back office and fulfilment systems in place (additional added-value print services anyone?) more will follow suit.
