Newsstand's Last Stand?

 (Photo credit: New York Public Library)

The Alliance for Audited Media ("AAM") today reported first-half magazine sales figures and the news continue to be bad, with celebrity and women's periodicals feeling the most pain, according to a New York Times article.

Paid subscriptions dipped 1 percent, compared to a 10 percent plunge in newsstand sales of magazines, AAM reported. Cosmopolitan was in free-fall, suffering a near 24 percent decrease in newsstand sales, and Glamour newsstand sales were 28 percent lower than the same period a year ago. Pre-Royal Baby, People witnessed an 11.8 percent drop-off in newsstand sales,  better than Us Weekly's 16.7 percent decrease or Life & Style's 20.9 percent plunge, the Times article reported. Vogue flew off the newstand shelves at a rate 10.4 percent below 2012 figures and Vanity Fair newsstand sales were down 11 percent.

Fortunately for the publishers of these titles, the AAM numbers offered a glimmer of hope through a boost in sales of digital versions of periodicals. in the first half of this year, 10.2 million digital replica editions of magazines were sold, 3.3 percent of all magazine sales, the Times article noted.

Periodicals Plunge in Single-Copy Sales Second Half of 2012

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Single-copy sales of magazines sank 8.2 percent over the second half of 2012, according to figures released by the Alliance for Audited Media (www.auditedmedia.com), formerly known as the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Paid subscriptions during the period inched up less than 1 percent, according to the AAM figures. Baby boomers should take heart--AARP the Magazine (not to be confused with AARP, the opera) had the highest total paid and verified circulation, and Better Homes and Gardens and Game Informer also placing in the top five.

On the list of top 25 consumer magazines in the U.S. by single copy sales, the good news is that stalwarts Cosmopolitan topped the list and People came in fourth. The bad news is that in the second half of 2012, compared to the same period a year earlier, Cosmo was off 18 percent, and People, 12 percent, in single copy sales.