The National:

This week's Behind the Headlines comes from managing editor Stewart Ward – to receive this newsletter direct to your inbox every week, click here to sign up.

IT’S a feeling many of our readers know and hate: walking into a shop and not being able to find your copy of The National.

I want to shine a light on why it can be tricky sometimes getting your daily paper – in response to this being one of the most frequent queries in my inbox!

Firstly, a central part of this story is that The National is Scotland’s pro-independence newspaper.

We produce our paper as such that you can pass it on to a friend so they can read the good news about Scotland that others don’t cover. But the Yes movement is not served by any other title and we take account of that.

The National: The National newspaper on sale at a newsagent in Plean, Scotland, after it was launched to "fly a vibrant flag for independence"..

Independence activists are spread out across Scotland. From Shetland to my own turf of Galloway, in between and beyond.

This means that however many newspapers we print, we have to spread those out across the length and breadth of Scotland. That presents opportunities – a bigger audience to aim at than a local newspaper – but it also adds the challenge of how many we put in each shop.

Printing papers is costly. Especially after Brexit. We can only afford to let a certain amount go to waste.

With too few copies, we risk spreading the butter too thin over a very big slice of bread. With too many copies, we are not being cost-effective. And we have to be cost-effective to an extent. Our political affiliation means less income from advertising than our competitors (that's a subject for another newsletter...).

The National:

So, we send a number of papers to all the shops that stock us, and if they sell out, they'll receive more copies the next day. And if the paper doesn’t sell out, they'll receive fewer.

We can manually intervene. With our McCrone Report special, for example, we put extra copies in shops knowing we’d sell more.

Last week, in the aftermath of the shameful proceedings at Westminster courtesy of the Speaker, we put too few extra in shops, and so there were sell-outs.

It’s a tricky balance to strike but readers letting us know where they are having problems buying a copy helps. You can also ask shops to reserve you a copy.

Of course, you can find our exclusives and top columnists like Lesley Riddoch, David Pratt and Owen Jones on our website, but many still prefer the newspaper experience – and, indeed, we put a great deal of thought into the flow of the pages. Websites are not conducive to news in briefs, for example!

The biggest thing that helps tackle this is the continued support of readers. Whether it’s sales or subscriptions, that’s what allows us to commission great content and put more papers in shops.

Of course, sometimes the issue is just that a Unionist got up a little earlier and hid The National away…