Ed,

>It's a supply-chain issue; the folks at FPA may not feel that it's worthwhile to enter the mass-market distribution arena; it's expensive, the receivables are a PITA to administer, and the cost of increasing the number of copies printed required to enter this market might not justify the expense given the return on ivestment. It's an issue to bring up with the editors at FPA.

I think FPA has already been in the direct distribution scene for quite awhile, and was carried by B&N, at least in some markets. I have seen them on the shelf here in Atlanta at several B&N locations. Maybe they are just fine-tuning the distribution and decided that particular location was not selling well enough -- or maybe B&N decided that the sell-through percentage was lower than their standard for that location... could be any number of factors.

>I can tell you that the cost of doing business with B&N is quite high, in terms of discount structure and distribution issues.

Newsstand distribution is done for a variety of reasons, the least of which is usually profit. We are getting set up in the channel for newsstand at the moment and we will not quibble too much about a few percentage points here and there -- visibility and reaching new potential subscribers is our primary goal at this time.

I can certainly say that I have recently learned a lot about how magazine distribution really works, and I'm glad we have an experienced consultant helping us with it!