Canada Pricing is Once Again an Issue

The value of the Canadian dollar is changing again; once again it is almost at parity with the American dollar.

This news means different things to different people, of course. Here’s what it means to the American magazine publisher distributing to the Canada newsstand: there had better not be a big price disparity
on your cover.

If your U.S. cover price is lower than your Canadian cover price, and both prices are featured on the cover—there could be some dissatisfaction expressed by our neighbors to the north.

Actually, there could be some indication of possible loss of distribution on the newsstands in Canada. In other words—delisting.

Now of course there are costs involved in getting your product to Canada, and exchanging the money, and all that. And it seems logical that there might be a bit of a cover price difference to compensate for some of these costs. But when the Canada dollar costs about the
same as a US dollar, the retailers across the border see it as a slap in the
face to their customers to flaunt it like that (that is, by having both prices
on the cover).

What to do, what to do. You could continue to print the one edition and just change the Canada cover price to match the US price. That
loses you a bit of revenue but saves the hassle of a plate change. But it adds other hassles—you have to start
using a new UPC code, for example.

In the long run it’s probably easier to do a plate change. Perhaps you’re doing more than one version anyway, so stopping the presses isn’t all that big a deal. And it certainly will save you hassle when,
as happened about a year ago, the parity shifted and you had to raise the
Canada price again.