Today the Wall Street Journal reported that single copy magazine sales fell 11% while total circulation fell 1%. What seems to be happening is that publishers are starting to offer cut rate subscriptions in order to keep their advertisers happy. Unfortunately this, along with the all to well known recession, is hurting single copy sales.
The part that I thought summed it all up perfectly was this:
Many publishers now struggling with steep newsstand declines have no one to blame but themselves, said Samir Husni, a professor at the University of Mississippi and a close observer of magazine circulation. Mr. Husni says the biggest culprits are cut-rate subscriptions that discourage casual readers from picking up a copy on the newsstand. As counterexamples, he cited the Economist, People magazine and The Week, all of which charge a premium for subscriptions and have enjoyed circulation growth.
“Magazines that are giving their subscriptions away are committing mass suicide,” Mr. Husni said.
The article also suggests that magazine publishers really need to re-evaluate their entire business model. I’m not sure that print is really the way to go. I do see a lot of new local, daily newspapers popping up, but I can’t imagine this is a time to start a magazine. I listened to a podcast interview recently (sorry I can’t find it again!) with magazine publisher Felix Dennis (publishes Maxim, ever heard of it?) talking about how print is dead, and that the future is online. I couldn’t agree more. While there are certain areas that it will always manage to find it’s place, as a generalization I would agree with that statement.
It will be interesting to see what type of business models emerge as newspapers that “get it” grab promote their domain names and promote their online content.