The order you cannot fill
A new reader discovers the magazine and orders five back issues through the website. Four are easy. The fifth, an issue with a well-known cover story, shows as in stock, but when someone goes to the box there are two copies left, both bent at the corner. The rest went to a festival stall last month and were never taken off the shop.
So there is a refund to issue and an apologetic email to write. Meanwhile, the mail house is holding a pallet of an older issue that the shop marks as sold out, because someone set it that way years ago when the office box was empty.
Why back issue stock drifts
Copies leave the stock for many reasons, and only one of them, a shop order, updates the count automatically.
- Replacement copies for subscribers whose issue was lost in the post.
- Copies taken to fairs, festivals and launch events.
- Contributor and press copies sent from the same boxes.
- Stock split between the office and the mail house.
- Damaged copies discarded without being recorded.
Issues also sell in bundles, such as 'the first year' or a themed set, which draw on several issues at once. When one issue in the bundle runs out, the bundle keeps selling unless someone remembers to switch it off, and the first sign is another refund.
The small ways it costs you
| Drift | Result |
|---|---|
| Shop shows stock that is gone | Refunds and disappointed new readers |
| Shop shows sold out when it is not | Sales you never make on older issues |
| Replacement copies from sale stock | Popular issues run out sooner than expected |
| Stock in two places | Orders sent from the wrong place, with double postage |
| No record of sell-outs | No evidence for a reprint or a digital edition |
Back issues are often how new readers discover a magazine's past, and a good back catalogue can lead to a subscription.
Back issue stock that stays true
- Stock per issue held in one place, split by location (office, mail house, event box).
- Every movement recorded with a reason: shop order, replacement, event, contributor, damage, return.
- A quick mobile screen for taking copies to an event and recording what came back, so festival stock is counted both ways.
- Your shop (Shopify, WooCommerce or your own) reading the real available stock, with a small reserve held back for replacements if you want one.
- Orders routed to the location that holds the stock, with the mail house receiving its orders as a daily file.
- A sell-out report per issue, showing demand after sell-out from a 'notify me' button, useful when you consider a reprint or a digital back issue.
After: the shop matches the boxes
The shop only offers what exists. When the last copies of a popular issue are held back for subscriber replacements, the shop shows it as sold out with a notify button. Event stock goes out and comes back through the phone screen, so the counts are right the next morning. Orders for stock held at the mail house go to them automatically.
Once a year, a quick physical count confirms the figures. Any difference is small and has a reason attached, rather than being a mystery.
And when readers keep clicking 'notify me' on the same sold-out issue, you have something concrete to weigh when deciding whether a reprint or a digital edition is worth it.
The subscriber replacement case is worth spelling out. When a subscriber reports that their copy never arrived, the person handling it sends the replacement from the reserve, the movement is recorded with the reason, and the shop is unaffected because the reserve was never on sale. If the reserve for that issue runs out, the next replacement is flagged so someone can decide whether to offer a digital copy or a different issue instead.
Do your back issues look like this?
- You have refunded a back issue order because the stock was gone.
- Event copies are never reconciled when the boxes come back.
- Replacement copies come out of the same stock as shop sales.
- Stock at the mail house is not reflected in your shop.
- You do not know which issues sold out, or when.