Among major monthly titles experiencing
healthy growth were National Geographic (23.8%),
Shape (9.5%), and Consumer Reports (7.0%). (Is it just a
coincidence that National Geographic and Consumer Reports have
also invested heavily in their web sites? Maybe digital and print are not
enemies after all.)
Sales for the Top 50 publications,
which include most of the celebrity weeklies, were down 8.3%. But the next 50
actually increased their sales 7.4%. Nearly one-third of the Top 100 enjoyed
increases, according to MagNet.
Another favorable trend: Less waste.
Publishers responded to weakening newsstand sales by distributing 64 million
fewer copies than they did a year ago, including a 15.7% reduction for
weeklies. But because unit sales did not decline as much as the reduction in
draw, the proportion of newsstand copies that were sold increased by nearly 2 percentage
points for the weeklies and nearly 1 percentage point for the non-weeklies.
