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.
If your direct marketing gives your prospect a warm glow, then you’re well on your way to making a sale. A well crafted compliment is one way of achieving this. According to Jennifer Menten, flattery will get you (almost) everywhere - when you’re woo
General George S Patton is widely considered the best field commander of World War II and was certainly the officer most feared by the Germans. His success was based on rapid offensive action and an understanding of how people react in the field. Pet
Magazine teams are going to crazy lengths to give their covers extra newsstand appeal. As Peter Genower shows, the only limit is the imagination…
Selling magazines at the newsstand is getting harder. Ensuring availability for an increasingly unpredictable consumer, whilst satisfying environmental demands for less wastage is a challenge, not made any easier by the continuing uncertainty caused
Over the years, there have been countless calls for the channel-wide cooperation needed to address US magazines’ mounting single-copy challenges and capitalise on the category’s opportunities. Karlene Lukovitz sees some signs that this might, at long
Many publishers say that their titles “include…”. They should say “give you”. Some use humour when they should be selling. Still others refuse to use copy on outers. They’re making mistakes, says Andy Maslen, that could be avoided.
It’s a question which, just a few years ago, would have been unthinkable, but one which now keeps some of the sharpest minds in magazine publishing awake at night. Answers are needed if magazines are to have a bright future.
Easy living, passionate people and long long lunches, Italy is a country where the term ‘maniana’ is adopted as a lifestyle. Not then an obvious choice for publishers wanting to explore overseas markets. However, according to Paride Forte, the Italia
Over the last ten years or so, Tim Weller has presided over the launch and subsequent rapid expansion of B2B information provider Incisive Media. A passionate advocate for B2B, Tim tells Lucy Aitken why it is such a vibrant sector and outlines his pl
Whilst the latest ABCs were anything but all-gloom, there were some worrying trends: editorial inconsistency, me-tooism and short term marketing tactics which could come back to haunt. Lucy Brunning applauds the winners, but urges all publishers to i
It’s not just the domestic postal market that has seen upheaval of late. The international market is changing rapidly too. Old certainties are disappearing, but are being replaced by new opportunities. Ian Phillips analyses the fast evolving internat
The combination of pressure at the newsstand and improved direct marketing skills has raised the standing of subs departments at many publishers. Subs are taking a bigger share of the marketing budget than ever before and are growing their share of t
Wiley-Blackwell had a conundrum. It had a well respected title, appreciated by its audience, but with a readership in slow but seemingly irreversible decline. The solution they came up with had nothing to do with cutting edge technologies or new mark
In September 2007, the PPA organised a number of initiatives to promote the magazine industry, under the banner Magazine Week. An important part of this was a series of events run in Guildford called Magazine Town. Jim Bilton, who project managed the
When it comes to analysing costs, are you a ‘big pot’ kind of person? Chucking everything in, and then working from a single total cost figure, is a superficially attractive approach, but it does mean that you have little idea of, and therefore littl
