The magazine opportunity

While the January to June magazine circulation figures released late last week contain plenty of red ink, they also offer opportunities to newsagents. The first opportunity is with growing titles and categories and the second is with down on their luck high volume titles.

The growth opportunities relate to titles such as Better Homes and Gardens, Australian handyman, Men’s Health, Women’s Health – these and other titles in the top 20. Plus categories like health, food and gardening. It is in managing and promoting these categories around the growth titles where newsagents can do well.

I see some down on their luck titles as an opportunity because they still command a huge audience. Take Cosmopolitan and Cleo. They sell 165,000 and 149,000 copies each month respectively. While we can worry about their double digit drop, we are better off focusing on how we can make each of our businesses go against the trend.

At our Forest Hill store, looking at the 20 titles delivering the biggest circulation falls, in 75% of cases we achieved better than the total market. This encourages me to continue to obsess about magazines and that this obsession can help us swim against the tide.

I’d encourage newsagents to get a copy of the circulation figures and compare their store with key titles. Understand where you sit compared to the national figures. If you use the Tower Systems software, use the MPA Magazine Management report to get title by title year on year data.