Regional magazines are more popular than ever, or so it seems. Coast, Cravings and Dish are good examples of the genre, covering a specific region from the perspective of the title’s subject matter. While SA Life is the pin-up child of regional magazines – it’s taken the SA market by storm – a swag of more niche titles have entered the market.
Regional magazines, such as the three above, are usually of high content and production quality. They have to be to break through the clutter on newsagency shelves.
In my own newsagency, as best we can tell, we have more than 15 Australian regional magazines. Not SA Life however. .
A challenge for regional magazines is where to place them. While their subject matter dictates current location, there are so many that I’d like to create another area featuring regional magazines and thereby underscore an important point of difference we offer. Such a display may be short term given that few of these titles pay their way. Of the titles we carry, data shows that only three have sales which come close to justifying their existence.
For content and production quality, my vote goes to Highlife (country life in the Southern Highlands of Australia) now approaching its 11th birthday.
C Stephens, CEO and magazineophile