In the food chain of shysterism, magazine marketers are only a step or two above boiler-room penny-stock pushers. A recent form letter I received from Harper's Magazine's circulation director Shawn Green comes close to admitting as much.
"Your subscription has only a few issues more to go and despite several reminders we have not yet received your renewal instructions."
See? "Several reminders" already sent. Yet still at least "a few issues more to go." Every magazine I subscribe to — at last count, about 40 — plays this loutish little game. They send you payment reminders all through the year, sometimes mere weeks after they cashed your check for the current subscription. The worst ones, like Harper's, won't tell you when your current subscription will actually expire. You either have to take it on faith that the day is nigh (and who wouldn't trust a direct marketer?) or go back through your financial statements to discover that yes indeedy, you're good to go for another seven months.
Magazines can't seem to stop this bizarre act of self-mutilation. They cut into their own bottom lines in two ways. First, there's the tremendous expense of printing and mailing all those dishonest reminder notes (some even have a virginal 37-cent stamp affixed to the reply envelope). And second, the reminders turn perfectly good customers into resentful cynics who stop paying attention to magazine invoices — and who thus stop paying. I've inadvertently let plenty of subscriptions expire that way. I'll browse a magazine rack in a book store and realize that, huh, I haven't seen an issue of Jugs the Atlantic in my mailbox in at least half a year. Maybe I'll re-subscribe, maybe I won't. The magazine will have to win me as a client all over again.
It's like an arms race. They're doing it because the competition is doing it. But the thing is, it's certifiably insane. Collectively, magazines should get their direct-marketing act together — or continue to bleed revenues by sending exasperated customers to the Internet for all their reading needs.
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