NSS News Distribution

[Dan Sullivan]

Why isn't the NSS News sold in college and university book stores? I would think this would be a great way to increase profits and possibly get some new and younger type members. I bet they would easily sell for $4.00 or more a copy.

Same with the JCKS.

[Cindy Heazlit]

Personally, I'd like to see ACA sold in REI and the climbing stores. What better way to get the safety message out to the masses?

[Sean Ryan]

The logistics of selling a magazine to a consumer audience makes it very difficult for most specialty publications. It's expensive to ship magazines across the country, and that expense would have to be made up from the few people in the country who would buy a caving magazine and don't already subscribe to NSS publications. And let's not forget the NSS is not actively trying to get people underground, but just communicating amongst people who have already decided to go underground.

It's a nice idea, though. I write for trade magazines for a living, which similarly don't get any newsstand distribution. I'd like to be able to point to something at a grocery store and say "I'm in that!" but it's just not practical.

[Cindy Heazlit]

I'm not sure I buy that argument. I see Accidents in North American Mountaineering in the climbing stores. That is a specialty publication too.

And ACA definitely won't encourage people to go underground.

Now the NSS news might do just that - all those cool stories and photos!

[Sean Ryan]

The one place it could work would be climbing and outdoors stores, since they've got enough critical mass of caver interest. (The original post referred to college and university bookstores, and even Syracuse and TAG colleges don't have enough cavers on campus to make a sales campaign pencil out.) But that would really bring to the forefront the debate about if the NSS should be evangelical about recruiting.

[Dave Bunnell]

I agree with Sean that the costs of distributing the News on newstands would probably be prohibitive. We would have to eat the costs for unsold issues as well as the cost of shipping..

The larger issue is of course the perspective that selling the News openly could be construed as publiciizing caving. I suspect many prospective authors for the News would be hesitant to write about their favorite cave if they thought it was getting "general public" distribution. Sure, someone can go to a library that might get it, but public awareness of our publication is pretty low and only someone already interested in caving is likely to seek it out.

A few years back I remember the visitor center at Carlsbad expressed interest in selling the News, and as I recall the BOG voted the idea down, for some of the above reasons.