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.
How often do you test? Never? Once in a blue moon? All the time? The right answer is the latter, but for too many publishers, testing is something they never quite get round to doing. Which is a shame, because it will be costing them money…
Whilst most supplier categories are fiercely competitive when it comes to winning publisher business – just think of printers – that has not traditionally been the case with distribution. But that is now beginning to change. In the second of his arti
Despite our obsession with all things online, we are continuing to allocate sizable chunks of our marketing budgets to telemarketing; a supplier category that is changing fast. Suppliers are broadening their offering and the arrival of new offshore s
Should you consider the Australasian magazine market as a potential export opportunity? Patrick Horton, circulation director of Emap Australia, shares his insights into selling magazines in the second largest export market for UK publishers.
US consumer magazine publishers are continuing to struggle, says Karlene Lukovitz, with lingering advertiser mistrust resulting from past instances of misreporting nonpaid circulation as paid.
Christopher Collins lays some of the blame for publishing's current problems at the feet of "risk-averse" bureaucrats and the accounting fraternity.
The last decade has seen enormous change in the US magazine market, and publishers now have to contend with a seriously struggling wholesale sector and an increasingly assertive retail one. John Harrington looks at this troubled, yet still substantia
With its comfy chairs and coffee shop, Borders encourages its customers to stay a while and browse. The US chain is primarily a book retailer, but has also set out its stall as a range retailer of magazines. Andrea Kirkby talks to Borders’ Maxine Lis
Magazines do not have a god-given right to be stocked at retail. Publishers have to earn the right to be displayed, by persuading retailers that it’s in their best interests to do so. It is all down to category management, says Stephen Hirst.
Your mailshot or advertisement might be as pretty as a picture, but if it fails to communicate its message effectively, then what was the point? The presentation of any body of text must be based on a thorough understanding of how the reader reads. D
As we all know, profits in subscription publishing come from renewals. Yet, many publishers still allocate far more time and resource to acquisition than to retention. Jess Burney argues that marketing budgets should be re-weighted to reflect the imp
For the majority of publishers, awareness of postal de-regulation is extremely hazy. Many have heard of it; some even know that it has started! But, beyond an acceptance that, all in all, it’s probably a good thing, surprisingly few have worked out w
Response, pay-up and eventual renewal are the yardsticks by which copy writers are judged. Jennifer Menten shows how sometimes subtle tweaks to the offer and tone can achieve better results.
Despite signs of continued migration to online, and the recent publication of the pessimistically titled The Last Magazine, Karlene Lukovitz sees evidence of a healthy future for print.
Whether to use hard won marketing investment to drive postal subscriptions or retail newstrade copies is a daily dilemma for circulation directors and publishers. Why are subscriptions growing? What are the USPs and plusses for retail that need to be
