Magazine Newsstand Sales Drop 6.3 Percent; People, InStyle See Gains

NEW YORK — Newsstand sales of U.S. magazines fell 6.3 percent in the first half of 2008, an industry group said Monday, as rising gas and food costs led consumers to cut back on nonessential spending.

Most top titles, including best-selling Cosmopolitan and O, The Oprah Magazine, had sharp declines. Of the top 10 newsstand sellers, only People, the entertainment news magazine, and In Style posted gains.

"This is nothing more than really just the impact of the economy," said John Harrington, an industry analyst with Harrington Associates. "People are shopping very cautiously and less frequently, avoiding impulse buys, which are what magazine purchases are."

Publishers redouble efforts to sign up subscribers during economic slowdowns because they know newsstand sales will ebb, which they need to offset because advertising rates are based on minimum circulation targets.

Newsstand sales are far more lucrative than subscriptions, though, meaning circulation revenue is dropping at most titles.

"It is easy to manipulate subscription numbers because publishers can sell them at a loss just to meet their rate base," Harrington said. "The growth may not be high-quality subscribers that will renew."

Overall magazine circulation, which includes subscription and newsstand sales, was flat at 349.9 million copies in the period, as paid subscriptions edged higher to 290.2 million copies, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported in its biannual tally.

Single-copy magazine sales in the six months ended June 30 fell to 44.1 million copies from 47.1 million a year ago. The survey included 467 titles that reported results in both periods.

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Like newspapers, magazines have been struggling with declining advertising revenue as readers increasingly go online for news and entertainment. In the second quarter, magazines had 8.2 percent fewer ad pages, the Publishers Information Bureau reported.

Hearst Corp.'s Cosmopolitan magazine, the top-seller on the country's newsstands, had a 6 percent decline to 1.75 million copies _ nearly 114,000 fewer magazines. Top 10 sellers US Weekly, Woman's World and O, The Oprah Magazine each posted a double-digit decline in newsstand sales.

People, published by Time Inc., boosted newsstand sales by 5.2 percent and remained the No. 2 best-selling magazine at kiosks around the country. In Style was also able to increase newsstand sales.

"People has been steady over the years and there's probably more quality to the magazine in terms of what they do" compared with the crowded field of celebrity gossip titles, Harrington said.

In Touch Weekly, down 28.7 percent at the newsstand, and Life & Style Weekly, down 30.2 percent, both added 50 percent to their cover prices in the period.

Everyday With Rachel Ray, the cooking magazine featuring the popular Food Network host, had 6 percent higher newsstand sales and a 36 percent increase in total circulation.

Rolling Stone, the venerable music magazine, said Monday that it will abandon its iconic size for a smaller, more rack-friendly format starting in fall.

Publisher Jann Wenner said the change is not to conserve costs, but partly to offer advertisers and sellers a more uniform size. Wenner Media said the new size will allow for more editorial pages and higher quality paper that will result in sharper photos.

The magazine had 6.6 percent lower newsstand sales of 115,644 issues in the latest period.

Comments

[marko77]

You forgot to report on the sales of my favorite magazine - The Globe. You know, the one that featured Saddam Hussain in a dress with a pocketbook and used to write of Elvis' Love Child in Outer Space. Serioulsy, I'll take the Globe anyday over drek like People magazine.

[lvogt]

Old news, saturated with advertising and wasting resources. I don't buy nearly as much as I used to and I feel good about that.

[MACS]

.
Just one more in a long list of bush economic/energy plan successes.
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[mediamarv]

Wouldn't have anything to do with the price increases for single issues at news stands by any chance.....?

Makes this sort of a "duh" story.

[Shaddup]

I miss pulp fiction.

[Triangle1]

People who read these days tend to have computers. Magazines are fine if you're sitting in a waiting room or passing time before your flight arrives. There will always be magazines, but their glory days are long over. It's all online these days. People like me are reporting all of this stuff on blogs almost instantaneously. Any magazine is always news that's a few weeks old. http://mespace.wordpress.com

[3fingerbrown]

Magazines have never been about the rapid dissemination of news. Even in the glory days of Time and Newsweek, long before the Internet was a twinkle in Al Gore's eye, magazine editors assumed their readers were already acquainted with major news stories by newspapers, TV, and radio. No weekly or monthly magazine could hope to compete with those three media for immediacy, and they didn't try. Magazines then as now are about in-depth analysis, opinion, exclusive interviews, profiles, features, fiction, humor, etc. You have obviously never read a good magazine.

[Tremonius]

I can't understand why sales of these slicks have not fallen more. I used to grab any copy of NYR of Books which had Joan Didion's name on it, and then it became possible to simply read it online. I wonder why anyone would buy all that recycle anymore. I can understand why the celebrity mags are selling well; you can't really take your laptop into the bathroom with you every time.

[marymansour]

I subscribe to several 'slick' magazines and I am going to cut my subscriptions to all except Vanity Fair. I like VF for some of the great stories available. However, these slicks are expensive, filled with subscription cards that fall out; perfume ads and advertising pages so stiff you can't even turn the pages if you aren't working out in a gym and have muscular arms. All one big major rip off and expensive as the devil. No wonder they're going down the tube.

[bored2tears]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! I recently let my Vanity Fair subscription expire for many of the reasons you mention. The magazine has become so unwieldy that reading it is literally painful. Unless I break the spine and separate the issue into two or three pieces, my hands cramp while holding it (I *do* work out in a gym, BTW, and do not feel completely over-the-hill at 42). The massive number of ad pages may be a sign of success, but they have made the physical product very unappealing.