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.
Advanced Photoshop has revealed the winners of an exclusive competition, in association with iStockphoto.com, which challenged digital artists from the Photoshop community to create one of four exclusive cover images.
Royal Mail has announced the creation of a new Strategic Mailing Partnership to drive developments and shape the future of the mailing house industry.
Last week saw another landmark for H Bauer’s Take a Break magazine: reaching 1.25 billion copy sales since its launch almost exactly 20 years ago.
Euromoney Institutional Investor has issued its Interim Management Statement for the period from October 1, 2009 to January 20, 2010:
Consultation takes many forms. Sometimes it doesn’t happen at all, sometimes it’s occasional and sometimes it’s mere dressing for a decision already taken. But, more positively, in some companies it is an ongoing deeply ingrained process, where there
It’s said that many fortunes are made as economies move out of downturns. How can you benefit from the upswing expected this year? Mark Bishop offers ten tips on how to add value to media businesses by benefitting from economic recovery.
When it comes to data, it used to be the box of unprocessed registration cards or competition entries gathering dust under someone’s desk that kept publishers awake at night. Now, it’s that nagging feeling that their company simply has too many datab
Good riddance to 2009. What an abysmal twelve months that was! The new year is a time for predictions; some will be gloomy, some more upbeat. Karlene Lukovitz is determined to position herself in the latter camp ... for the time being at least.
US weekly titles saw a definite upturn in sales during the Obama election. With a General Election looming here, how will the UK market fare? What are the opportunities and challenges? And how will they cope with new media and wall-to-wall TV news? W
Big isn’t always best, but the larger publishers do tend to have more efficient workflows than smaller ones. Here, Chris Bunnett argues that, whatever your size, efficient workflows are a necessity and that all publishers can benefit from taking time
The problem with newsstand sales is that publishers have no direct contact with their readers. They don’t know who they are and, outside of the magazine itself, have no opportunity to sell to them. David Garratt and Charles Arthur argue that, by grad
Some titles make the business of making money look soooo easy! Everything they touch seems to turn to gold. Good Food magazine, with its legion of hugely successful spin-offs, is one such title. Publishing director Alfie Lewis explains its publishing
Angel Business Communications has announced a number of senior appointments.
A freshly redesigned Linux magazine hits the newsstand on 30 January.
IPC Connect publishing director Oswin Grady has announced the appointment of Karen Livermore as the new editor of its weekly lifestyle magazine, Woman.
