Guardian News & Media strips out bulk sales

Posted by Erina Lin on August 13, 2009 at 10:32 AM

Guardian News & Media announced Tuesday that it would immediately drop the "bulk sales", which targets hotels and airlines for a nominal fee, The Guardian reported.

The Guardian will abandon 12,000 bulks, or 3.9 percent of its monthly sales according to Audit Bureau of Circulations.

The Observer will also cut 20,000 copies, which account for 5.1 percent of its headline sale.

Publishers usually distribute these "bulks" for a nominal fee to selected hotels and airlines, but they are free to the readers.

The move indicates that GNM is not planning to use bulks as a way to attract new readers, The Guardian reported.

GNM said that this decision was to "increase openness in the marketplace."

Bulk sales are used by newspaper groups to prop up their ABC figure, according to Joe Clark, the GNM director and general manager for newspapers. "Yet their credibility in the ad community is low and for those affected by the recent investigation into airline bulks that credibility has been undermined further."

"We are abandoning this practice in order to present a clearer, more honest picture of our sales performance to advertisers and to reinforce the quality of our product to readers," added Clark.