Tom Wilde

I prefer the free giveaway idea too, but for the sake of completeness, I want to argue that the newsagent idea isn't a complete non-starter. It would be possible on a limited scale with only modest resources.

Printing a new publication from scratch would need mega bucks, but simply increasing by a few thousand the print run of a mag you are printing anyway (Independence) would be pretty cheap. Most of the printing cost is always in the set-up.

Newstrade distribution in Britain is organised like a pyramid. You simply have to supply one out of a very small number of nationwide distributors (eg Seymour, Comag, Diamond or MMC). Your distributor in turn supplies about 80-100 local wholesalers around the country. Each wholesaler in turn supplies the newsagents in their area. Therefore a limited number of phone calls to distributors could quite painlessly secure a modest nationwide distribution to newsagents, PROVIDED one of the distributors could be convinced that there was actually a possibility of Independence selling a worthwhile number of copies.

Yes they will. They already sell party manifestos (at election time), plus Morning Star, plus they have often sold very political mags like Living Marxism. The key would be to stress that Independence is a magazine of politics and current affairs which sits on the shelf next to the Spectator and New Statesman. Having said which, I don't think WH Smith would stock it - not because it is political, but because they rarely stock any new magazines unless the publishers pay them a vast "promotional fee" of around £10,000 to do so. But a lot of smaller newsagents would stock it, no question.