Consumer magazines spent most of the past two decades managing decline. The more confident publishers have stopped doing that. Newsstand sales and print advertising are still shrinking, but well-made titles with loyal readers are raising cover prices and growing.
Scale matters less than it did. Bauer has made Grazia a more premium product and charged more for it, while independents such as Anthem have put print back at the centre of the business and grown their export sales. Stylist has changed format several times without losing its readers. Others have gone the other way, and Gay Times dropped print entirely to build a global audience online.
For most consumer publishers, print is our USP. It’s the anchor that makes advertisers trust us and the very thing that readers want from us.
Jon Bickley Our print strategy: Anthem
Behind the confidence sits some hard arithmetic. Newstrade is now a small share of revenue and events and ecommerce are growing from a low base. Trust has become a selling point as AI fills the web with content of uncertain origin, but the paid-for consumer model that works at scale is still being worked out.
Below you'll find some of our best feature articles on consumer magazines, from premium print and cover pricing to brand extensions, membership and the future of specialist titles, alongside our latest news and industry commentary.
For a while now, magazine publishers have been on the defensive, unsure about the viability of their traditional business model in a fast-changing world. Katie Vanneck-Smith wants to change all that.
We asked Tamar Riley, portfolio managing director at Immediate, what does best practice publishing look like in consumer media? This is what she said…
For premium titles like Grazia, Mojo and Empire, growth is increasingly coming not from extending reach but from deepening engagement with existing passionate audiences, as Lauren Holleyoake tells Ciar Byrne.
The printed magazine will be a cherished part of people’s lives for years to come, says Jon Bickley, co-founder and CEO. That is why it’s the key component in Anthem’s publishing strategy.
With the arrival of AI and the widespread availability of unattributable content, specialist publishers need to ensure that their titles are the trusted go-to brands in their sectors, Our Media’s Andy Marshall tells Ciar Byrne.
Stylist’s mission has been clear from day one: to engage with its female audience in an intelligent, positive and non-exploitative way. 16 years on, and current PPA Media Brand of the Year, they are staying true to those values, says Lisa Smosarski.
Gay Times was stuck in a rut, tied to its traditional publishing model and reaching only a small part of the LGBTQ+ community. Under the editorship of Lewis Corner, that began to change, as he explains to Ciar Byrne.
Whatever the rest of 2024 holds, two things are certain. Firstly, the bumpy economic ride will continue. Secondly, the need for media companies to have a broad base of revenue streams has never been more important or more challenging to achieve.
How do you create a specialist consumer media business that is fit for the future? What steps do you need to take to be resilient and flexible as audiences and technology evolve? Carolyn Morgan researched 20 innovators from across Europe to find out.
For many publishers, circulation is all about chasing volume, but they would be much better off chasing profitability, says Natalie Smith, client relationship manager at Warners.
The end of the year is always a good time to take stock. What are the big trends shaping the publishing sector and what should we be looking out for next year? We ask AdvantageCS’s Philippe van Mastrigt for his insights.
This week, interconnect/it announced the first outcome of its £70k investment in Amazon publishing channels in 2019.
This week, Anthem Publishing releases Vintage Rock Presents Sun Records, a tribute to one of the most influential record labels in the history of popular music.
Immediate Media Co this week announced that the majority of their monthly subscription titles will be posted in paper wrap from January 2020.
Racing Pigeon, a weekly magazine for pigeon racing enthusiasts, has chosen Intermedia Brand Marketing as its newsstand distribution partner.
The winners of this year’s PPA Scottish Magazine Awards were announced on 28 November, at a celebratory party at The Hub in Edinburgh.
Journalists are under pressure to produce lots of great content, but find themselves spending too much time on repetitive, non-creative tasks. Help is at hand, says Sprylab’s Esra Celebi: let Artificial Intelligence take the strain.
The new website for Vegan Food & Living is now live, the first of Anthem Publishing’s brands to undergo a complete overhaul.
Refinery29, a global media and entertainment company focused on women, has announced its new international lead based in London.
Dennis on Friday announced the appointment of Daniel Powell-Rees as Revenue Operations Director.
How many systems do you use across your business? Lots? In which case, you’ll not be benefiting from cost savings, better intel, automation, security and GDPR compliance. As Affino’s Markus Karlsson and Jonathan Collins tell us, less can be more…
The London Review of Books, which celebrates its 40th birthday this year, is clearly doing something right. It is sellng almost 30k more print copies than it did ten years ago. One of the reasons is their emphasis on slow and sustainable growth.
Meredith Corp has long stood out for its unwaveringly conservative, methodical management philosophy. That’s why, writes Karlene Lukovitz, the news around its fiscal year-end results came as a surprise to industry watchers.
Is print becoming to magazines what vinyl is to music? The digital revolution has been shaking up both of these creative industries but, writes Dickon Ross, the story so far has been a little different for each.
A year of political turmoil, but what happened in the publishing world? James Evelegh picks four things that stood out for him.
