Outside Regents Park tube

If your publication is free, it’s vital that it reaches the widest possible appropriate audience. You don’t make as much money on each copy, because there’s no cover price revenue, so you have to distribute more copies. Low margin, high volume.

That’s why it’s such a shame that the London Evening Standard seems to have got it wrong so far. Where we work, on Oxford Street, it’s pretty much impossible to get a copy of the paper. You might be able to get one at Oxford Circus tube station if you’re lucky enough to arrive in what seems like the 20 minute window where the paper is there. If you’re up at the Tottenham Court Road end, forget it.

Can you get it in shops? Not really. Are there street vendors like there used to be? Not really.

The London Evening Standard has achieved an amazing feat: at a single stroke destroying both their subscription revenue base and  their distribution channel by going free. Peter Preston mentions in the Guardian that the Standard manages to distribute 600,000 copies a day! How? Where? To whom?

Still, I’m sure they know what they’re doing.