US magazine retail sales fell 11% in the second half of 2008. The same period a year earlier saw a 0.2% drop. See the Wall Street Journal report on this. Also check our Erik Sass’ report at Media Post for more an industry analysis.
The bottom line here is that magazine sales in the US took a considerable hit in the second half of 2008. Magazines are not the recession proof category they have been before.
I think we will see similar numbers here in Australia.
Now, mroe than ever, newsagents need to engage smart strategies to protect their magazine business. While consumers are spending less on the category, we have the capacity to pull business from non magazine specialists. We do this by being the specialists not only in range but in display and, most important, value proposition.
I was surfing the net and came across this great blog – being an ex newsagent of 15 years,
I thought I would share this info with you.
At the being of Jan 08 a major Australian Magazine Distributor was sending to Sri Lanka one container load of Mags – $1.00 per title. About mid year they were sending a container load per title
I cant say i’m overly concerned about these figures and i’m also not convinced they’ll translate to our market. Of course people are going to tighten their belts in certain ways but i don’t think it’ll be at the expense of their magazines.
I’m not sure you can accurately compare the same market in two different countries, maybe more expensive items like cars, large screen tv’s etc but not when you’re talking something as relatively inexpensive as magazines.
Not to mention the country we’re being compared to would appear to be in much deeper economic strife that what we are right now. If we find ourselves in the dire straights they’re in right now then maybe we’ll see a smaller decrease in magazine sales but in my opinion i still highly doubt it will happen.
The US magazine market actually relies more on subscribtion based sales than anything else. That’s the reason why such a large % fall happened, with subs falling due.
I can think of a few US mags sold in Oz that contain many postcard type sub’s forms. Quite annoying.
The 11% drop is in retail sales. Subs are close to static.
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