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.
We all know about Porter magazine, Net a Porter’s move into paid-for print publishing, but now it’s been followed by another retailer doing the same. And it’s one you wouldn’t expect: Sports Direct, whose new title, Forever Sports, hit the streets la
In March, Future launched The Photography Show at the NEC which attracted over 30,000 visitors. Carolyn Morgan talks to Matthew Pierce, Head of the Photography Group at Future, about how they went about staging such an ambitious event.
Karlene Lukovitz tracks the continuing rise of e-commerce within the offerings from major US consumer magazine brands.
You can’t read an iPad in the bath and you can’t watch a video in print, yet readers want to read and view content where, when and how they like, so an integrated well thought through multi-platform strategy is essential. Ciar Byrne looks at the evol
The latest ABCs show continued circulation declines, but the introduction of the new Combined Total Circulation Certificate has helped break the fall. Jamie Higginson tracks the trends and calls for better cross-platform metrics and closer collaborat
In the second of her three part series looking at the growing importance of programmatic trading of advertising, Jo Bowman explores how publishers could benefit from sharing their precious data.
In compiling PPA – 100, Gill Hudson devoted a large section to “100 Great Magazine Moments” – those jaw dropping acts of editorial brilliance that have defined the medium over the past one hundred years. Yet, Gill came away from the experience, worry
Digital Spy, like so many other successful digital brands, came from humble beginnings – an enthusiastic and talented sixteen year old publishing from his bedroom. The brand has since been acquired by corporate giant, Hearst, but as current editor Da
B2B publishers were quick to understand the opportunities the digital world had to offer, with many successfully re-engineering their business model. Consumer publishers, who have generally been slower to grasp the digital nettle, can learn much from
David Hepworth's regular column, in the March / April 2014 issue of InPublishing magazine.
If you need any indication of whether or not video should be in your future, writes Amanda MacArthur, consider that the world’s second largest search engine is YouTube.
With circulations on traditional publications falling, and increasing competition for advertising, writes Carolyn Morgan, media owners need to think laterally about how to create more value from their content, expand to new markets, sell more service
The world is full of potential readers, but how do you reach them? PressReader offers an exciting additional route to market which can place your branded content in front of many millions of new readers, and it costs you nothing. Nikolay Malyarov tel
Digital is where the buzz is, but, for many consumer magazine publishers, print is where the money is. We all know that digital is a central part of publishing’s present and future, says Diane Kenwood, but from time to time, we do need to remind ours
Despite all the hype, sales of digital magazines are still dwarfed by sales of print. But, critically, the digital channel is a growing one and, writes Jess Burney, publishers like Immediate Media are working hard to develop it further.
