Many retailers were provided with copies of this Special Edition last Friday and were asked to continue to display the current regular issue (Niall Horan).
What retailers may not have been aware of was that the discounting and VAT status of the title was anything but special!!
HOT PRESS advised their distributor Newspread to place the title onto the market at an RRP of €5.95, a VAT rate of 9% and a discount to their retail partners of 19.23%, a full 5.77 percentage points LOWER than the November” Best of Dublin” edition which was also a once-off and similarly, the Annual delivered in December; incidentally, both of these publications also attracted the 0% VAT rate, ensuring a higher cash margin to the retailer.
Anyone making space on their shelves for not one, but two editions of HOT PRESS deserve to be properly rewarded. Theres a considerable gap between the profit earned by selling a Standard 25% discounted zero rated title at the €5.95 RRP (€1.49) and the artificial 19.23% product with the same RRP but with 9% VAT (€1.05).
The Association wrote to Niall Stokes in his capacity as editor of the publication and suggested that he may, having reflected on the matter, agree that it was an error on his part to deviate from the practice of applying the 25% margin to Specials, One Shots and Annuals. We had also registered our disappointment to Newspread that they accepted the pricing instruction from Hot Press without advising them that such direction was contrary to normal practice.