Many magazine titles are launched each year, and most of them fail within two years. Magazines are, in general, targeted at fairly selective interests; the general interest magazines like Colliers, Life, and Look pretty much disappeared decades ago. There doesn’t seem to be a good way to determine whether an interest will generate enough circulation and enough advertiser interest in advance – publishers can do surveys, and they usually do, but in the end, you really have to launch a magazine to see whether it will succeed.
A drop of 2.2% seems awfully small. That could be explained entirely by a reduction in the new titles being issued, as publishers are wary of taking as many risks in this economy.
Newspapers have short stories that are interesting for a couple of days. Because the internet is more timely, because computers are good for reading short pieces, newspapers are much more vulnerable to loss of readers than magazines. Sites like Salon and The Daily Beast run long features, but have had limited success because they’re presenting cool “lean back and relax:” stories in a hot “lean forward and click-click-click” medium. People will save some magazines for years, because they remain interesting for a long time.
What is probably more interesting is that magazines are continuing to get cheaper and cheaper for readers. Many magazines that used to cost $30 to $50 for a subscription are now $8 to $12. Smithsonian magazine was running a deal at Christmas time where you could buy a renewal for the magazine, and get two free subscriptions to give away. You could get Popular Science for $5 as a new subscriber.
They aren’t the only ones to cut prices on dead-tree publications, of course. LNP is now offering 7-day subscriptions for $7.77/month.
It seems odd that newspapers are trying to charge more for their online versions. They have plenty of competition from television and radio news sites, and broadcasters are comfortable with the idea of letting advertising pay for the news.
