In recent years marketing has played an ever more important role for daily newspapers and popular magazines. The reader's continuing buying restraint, falling sales, reductions in advertising income and the loss of classified advertising to the Internet, are all symptoms of a crisis. This forces publishing houses to optimize operational processes. Not least the growing competition, both with electronic media and between publishers leads to an ever-increasing importance of the marketing department for the success of the business. Peter Brummund, who has spent years in leading positions in the branch himself, takes a look at this business aspect of the press. In keeping with the practical needs of the specialist reader, the author summarizes the sales and marketing structures of the press: the "classical" and the new marketing channels, engendered by new technology such as the Internet, digital printing and satellite transmissions. The different marketing channels using subscriptions, individual sales, readers clubs and direct marketing are explained in detail, as are elementary mechanisms such as disposition, remittance, fixed prices and discounts. The way press wholesalers function is presented with the general technical and legal conditions and enlarged upon using concrete case studies.

The station book trade in Germany must currently face new challenges: the possible abandoning of opening hours, the shift of press sales to non-press outlets and above all, the concentration of book and press sales in large media and trading companies. Against the backdrop of historical developments, Peter Brummund analyses the specialities of this section of the book and press marketing business. He is the author of a number of important studies on this topic and has worked in the press for years, in publishing houses, and lately in his own national marketing and import business. This handbook is the first unique study of the branch offering concise knowledge on the station book trade, a subject much neglected until now. It demonstrates ideas and strategies on how the branch can develop further and secure its future even under the difficult market conditions.