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“Slump? I ain’t in no slump. I just ain’t hitting.”
Yogi Berra (American professional Baseball Player and Manager. b.1925)
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1st Half 2010: Final Numbers
Newsstand Sales Slump Now Over Two Years Old. Will They Recover?
By John Harrington
www.nscopy.com
With the release of the supplemental figures from the audit services, Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and BPA Worldwide, the results of the first half of 2010 are complete, but still not pretty.
Total news stand magazine unit sales, audited and non-audited, fell by 7.7% and retail dollars were down by more than six points. Audited titles, 452 with any reported single copy sales out of more than 5000 titles in the total newsstand universe, were down only slightly less, minus 6.1% in units and minus 5.3% in revenues generated. While the generally larger circulation audited magazines seemed to perform a little better, the much higher average cover prices of non-audited publications (in The New Single Copy of 8/16/10, we calculated it to be $6.52) reduced their share of retail dollar sales by several percentage points to just over 60%. This shift is most likely a reflection of one of few broadly acknowledged bright spots, the “bookazine” phenomenon. These are usually specials, often from some of the largest publishers, and carrying very high cover prices, at times into the $12 or $13 range. Reaching for signs of encouragement, when these are successful, publishers will try them again, with a goal of moving them into regular schedules. specials, often from some of the largest publishers, and carrying very high cover prices, at times into the $12 or $13 range. Reaching for signs of encouragement, when these are successful, publishers will try them again, with a goal of moving them into regular schedules.
Among the top 100 revenue generators for the first half, 27 of them improved their per-issue sales, which was a larger share than in either half of 2009. Another sign of needed encouragement.
The Future? Yet, the fact remains that since the beginning of 2008, magazine single copy unit sales have tumbled by more than 25%. That followed a four year period of stable performance. The blame has generally been assigned
to the troubled U.S. economy, so it might follow that the newsstand will recover as does the nation. However, many leading retail analysts have noted that shopping patterns may have shifted in a long term fashion, with consumers
generally becoming more careful (translate as fewer impulse sales, the driving factor for magazines at retail). On the supply side, this summer’s unprecedented shuffling at the top of the four largest magazine publishers is generally
seen a shift in the broad publishing financial model away from an advertising-centric to a consumer-centric one. Good news for newsstand, right? Well, maybe is more like it. (See an excellent article, “Death of a Salesman? Consumer Marketing Execs Gain Ground in Print World,” by Lucia Moses, www.MediaWeek.com, 8/22/10).
However, a good deal of that consumer emphasis will focus on making readers pay for publishers’ developing digital versions, and another facet of it will be making subscription marketing and sales more rational, as in fewer
highly discounted subs. That task will not be easy, since consumers are conditioned to “80% off the cover price” offers. None of this means publishers are about to abandon the newsstand; it remains a major venue for developing
audience, obtaining some of the “best” subscribers, and testing new magazines, whether spin-offs launches. However, it seems unlikely that publishers will be launching full scale introductions of truly new titles, with regularly scheduled frequencies. Translation:
Newsstand may recover some of the sales lost in our nation’s near depression of 2008 through today, but probably not all of it. And a return to the “heady” levels 2004 to 2007′s flat sales is quite unlikely.
