The 2020 Phil Steele College Football magazine is at the press and scheduled to arrive in our offices on July 15th. This has been a different year with COVID-19 delaying the magazine’s release, and it will not be a normal year delivery wise. For years we have distributed the magazine nationally, usually printing about 150,000+ magazines. This year we announced there would be no national distribution of the magazine, and we were just going to send out copies through the office with very limited printing.
Barnes and Noble stepped in and made a deal with us to distribute in their stores, and then Books-A-Million stepped in and did the same. Those two will be our EXCLUSIVE retailers of the magazine.
We have very limited quantities of the magazine only printing roughly 50,000 this year, and once they are sold out, they are gone. Today’s blog is to answer all your questions and let you know the Fastest, Easiest and Cheapest ways of getting the 2020 Phil Steele College Football Preview.
GET THE MAGAZINE IN YOUR HANDS FIRST
If you are like me, you need things NOW. To have the magazine in your hands an extra week is priceless to some. There is an additional cost ($7.75), but there usually is when you want something delivered quicker. The truck will back in here on Wednesday, July 15th and we will be all set up. All pre-ordered magazines will have the envelopes labeled, and all our mailing staff has to do is put the magazine in the envelope and apply the postage, and we will be taking truckloads to the post office all day long.
We are shipping the magazines via the Post Office using their Priority Mail. The Post office says these packages will be delivered in 1-3 days. My goal would be to send out every pre-order on July 15th and at the very latest July 16th so most of our pre-orders should arrive before the weekend. This is like getting 130 different media guides rolled into one with everything for every team on the same spot on every page. Now the post office charges $7.75 for Priority Mail and that is EXACTLY what we charge you. No handling charge added as we have to pay the post office $7.75 for every package, so that is the reason it costs $7.75.
You can order it now at Phil Steele Online Store
THE MOST ENJOYABLE WAY- AND CHEAPEST
I love going into Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million and looking around. It is a great atmosphere, and you may find books you did not even know were out there. Every time I go in one with my daughter, I let her buy a couple of books as I want to encourage her to read. Nothing better than the instant gratification of walking in and seeing the Phil Steele magazine on the shelves picking one up (it’s heavy 352 pages) and knowing all that information is now YOURS. I remember when I was young, my dad would take me to a magazine store and let me buy 4-5 football magazines every July, and I would get home and spend the rest of the day in my room going through all of them. I still look back on those days very fondly. If you can WAIT until July 24, then to me, this is an excellent option as it will be at all Barnes and Noble and Books-A-Million stores EXCLUSIVELY this year. There is also no mailing fee and no waiting for the mail carrier to arrive, just a great experience!
FOR THOSE WHO PREFER THE DIGITAL VERSION
I know I prefer to have a hard copy of the magazine and marking it up as the season goes along. I am also in my fifties. There are many readers who now would PREFER to have the magazine on their cell phone or computer or Kindle device. We WILL have a download version available this year once again. The charge is the same $19.95, but there is no mailing fee, and it should be available right around the same day the truck arrives in our office on July 15. It will be available on Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and Amazon Kindle, and we will have a browser version available so you can put it on your computer. Once the digital Magazine comes out you can find all the links here: Digital Magazine Section
MEDIA SPECIAL ADVANCE COPIES
When I was doing the national distribution of the magazine, there was a three-week window from when the magazine went to press to the time it went on sale. I would have the printer send me a few boxes of magazines early (about seven days before truck got here), and I would send out individual advance copies to some of my good friends in the media. You have seen these pages in the past with the copies being posted on Twitter, usually about two weeks before the magazine even hit the newsstand. I value my friends in the media very much, and I will still be getting some of them a magazine this year, but it will NOT be an ADVANCE copy. The truck is arriving with the full load of magazines one day after they are finished printing. My #1 Priority is to get the magazine in the hands of my customers who pre-ordered them so they can be the first to have one this year. The ADVANCE copies this year goes to all the pre-orders. As I mentioned, not doing the national distribution on the newsstands has greatly expedited the turn-around time of the truck getting to our office with a full load of magazines.
We poured eight months of labor in putting out this magazine, and the information is as up to date as you can get. I talked to roughly 110 of the head coaches this year, so I feel great about the three and four deeps we provide on each team! I am no longer looking to find new readers but putting out all those magazines in all those places. We have developed a bunch of devoted magazine followers, and this year I wanted to make sure EVERYBODY gets their magazine in their hands. We have printed about 100,000 magazines LESS than we usually do, so I just want to make sure that everyone knows the different options of how to obtain a magazine this year. I truly do appreciate each and every one of my readers!
