The magazine circulation numbers released last week indicate the sales volatility for magazines which we see at our sales counters. They also mirror what I have seen in the newsagent sales benchmark data and covered here.
Competition between publishers is more intense than I have seen in years. The demands on retailer time and space investment are also higher than I can recall. This is forcing newsagents to make decisions on which titles to support and which need to find their own success.
The key to long term magazine success as I see it is the product. A good magazine has more chance of long term success than an average product which uses cover price and free gifts – these drive sales spikes but, I suspect, not sustained growth. A secondary key factor is providing newsagents with good information with which we can make better decisions about a title.
Garzia increase to $6 . good luck to the survival of this mag. I think atm $6 for a weekly mag is ridiculously expensive. i expect to reduce sell soon.
Who else would get away with a 20% price rise? And no notification, either. Wow.
We have already seen people put Grazia back on the shelf, from $2.50 to $6 in one hit is off putting to say the least.
if they they format and content match to Hello! or Ok (uk), then they will survive.
THE WOMAN’S DAY IS DYING AND SOON GRAZIA TOO.
DID YOU HEAR ME ?! ACP…
Grazia is probally the worse performing mag in my whole shop , i have given it prime locations time and time again even orderd extra stock so i could do a display but yet it still does not sell ,and now the price goes up ,good luck to it .Womens day on the other hand continually grows in sales
we average sell weekly in 100s each title atm, but i felt that grazia will be in 10s shortly.My customers are above average people , but they don’t want to spend $6 for thin weeklies. weeklies are dying here in my shop, people found them boring , but my hello! (Uk) is growing fast.
I think I may have mentioned this before but companies who advertise in a mag get LOTS of FREE mags from the publishers. In our office, every week there are at least 10 to 15 copies of about 6 different magazines (sometimes more). The girls flock to them so they don’t need to buy any.
They say never trust anyone under 30
so why trust these people with the price gun. If zoo goes from $1.95 to $4.30 every other week then Cruz the nudes dude, thinks the real price should be below the …………rrp. Magazines need to be consistent, leave the marketing out to grow a following maybe.
With my consumer hat on I reckon that price consistency is important. If there is to be a lower price, make it stick like they did with Famous – the stand out success from this latest audit.
On Grazia, I like the magazine. I am just not sure that it will find a market here in time.
Commercialism is a desperate thing from time to time Some times it leaves no option. If the mag has reached a below break even point it has no choice than be desparate enough to increse the cover charge to give the downside in sale enough gross profit to succeed. In iother words less sales versus high margin the free fall will determine the mags future whereas without a try the future is already predetermined.
The magazine is stating that this is the last throw of the dice.
I like Grazia. We only receive one copy here and I have a lady who comes in fortnightly and buys it, but of course she doesn’t come in every week.
Working in a newsagent I don’t buy it however even if I didn’t have access to them I am still not sure I would buy it on any regular basis. This has little to do with price as it does with content. Giveaways don’t really influence my decision to buy unless it appears to be really good value but even then I think twice before actually purchasing the mag.
Perhaps if Publishers looked at the quality of their content and increased value for money that way they may be able to be a little long term. I know that advertising pays for the magazine to be produced but if there was a lot less advertsing or just a heap more content they might be worth the buy.
The key problem wtih this strategy for Grazia is that they will face a plummeting (but more profitable) circulation.
In isolation that is fine, but the number of advertisers and their yield will quickly drop. Which takes the mag back to unprofitability (if it ever was profitable – which is doubtful IMO).
Despite what B says, many people buy magazines for the ads. The quantum and quality of advertisers has an effect on a magazines circ and readership. Trust me. People buy magazines for theads. It’s just that some advertising is bad, and reduces the value of the magazine that carries it.
Interesting thing I noticed is that WA’s equivalent of the Trading Post (Quokka) actually went up about 8%? If circulating of buy/sell/trade papers are going up in some regions I don’t get why they would axe the Trading Post.. bizarre.
Interesting thing I noticed is that WA’s equivalent of the Trading Post (Quokka) actually went up about 8%? If circulating of buy/sell/trade papers are going up in some regions I don’t get why they would axe the Trading Post.. bizarre.
we get your point Nahcoob