Magazine Newsstand Sales Plummet, but Digital Editions Thrive

Magazines continued to struggle with sales of subscriptions and newsstand copies in the first half of 2013, but they made inroads in selling digital editions, according to data released on Tuesday.

Total paid and verified subscriptions declined by 1 percent in the first half of 2013, and newsstand sales, which are often an indicator of a magazine’s appeal, dropped by 10 percent. Both declines were similar to the overall trend in the same period a year ago.

Among the hardest hit by the drop in newsstand sales were weekly celebrity magazines and women’s titles, which have struggled to compete with rival content online.

Big names like Vogue and Vanity Fair also had problems at the newsstand. Vogue’s sales declined by 10.4 percent and Vanity Fair’s by 11 percent. In a surprising development for struggling newsweeklies, Time Inc. showed modest growth of 1.2 percent in newsstand sales.

Both Vogue and Vanity Fair had a 2 percent rise in total subscriptions, with Vogue increasing to 977,025 and Vanity Fair to 964,788. Time Inc.’s subscriptions rose by 0.7 percent to 3,242,594.

The numbers, released by the Alliance for Audited Media, also showed that a solid base of loyal magazine readers were simply turning to the digital versions of magazines. Digital replica editions — which replicate the format of the print editions — now make up 3.3 percent of total magazine circulation, with 10.2 million digital replica editions sold in the first half of 2013. During the same time period in 2012, magazines sold 5.4 million digital editions, which made up 1.7 percent of circulation.

“They’re relatively small to the mix,” said Steven Cohn, editor of the Media Industry Newsletter, referring to digital subscriptions. “I would expect these numbers to grow rather steadily. It’s like everything else. You have to walk before you run. Things will accelerate.”

Celebrity weeklies had some of the biggest losses in newsstand sales, including People (11.8 percent decline), Us Weekly (16.7 percent) and Life & Style Weekly (20.9 percent). But Mr. Cohn noted that these titles declined in part because they didn’t have a big event — like the birth of the royal baby — to help stimulate sales.

“The royal birth came in July,” he said. “They needed a stimulant like that and they didn’t have it.

“If it’s a normal news routine, at least with celebrities, they won’t do as well.”

But Mr. Cohn noted that celebrity titles already had benefited in the second half of the year because of birth of Prince George. Larry Hackett, the managing editor of People, said last week that the Aug. 5 “Royal Baby Joy” cover had already sold 1.2 million copies and he expected that to rise 1.4 million issues. “Already at 1.2 it’s the best-selling cover of the year,” Mr. Hackett said.

Mr. Cohn said he was more concerned about women’s magazines, which were hit hard by losses on the newsstand. Cosmopolitan showed a 23.9 percent decline in newsstand sales. Glamour dropped by 28.8 percent and O, The Oprah Magazine, fell by 22.7 percent. “I’m not sure whatever they can do can make a difference,” Mr. Cohn said. “It’s very newsstand-dependent.”

But Hearst magazines, which owns Cosmpolitan and O, The Oprah Magazine, noted the progress both magazines had made in digital subscriptions. Cosmopolitan grew by 33 percent, to 246,815 digital subscribers, and O grew 22 percent, to 99,412 digital subscribers.

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Time Inc. and Meredith Prepare to Join Magazine Businesses

Mr. Griffin lasted just six months at Time before he was asked to leave by Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the chief executive of its parent company, Time Warner, who publicly rebuked Mr. Griffin, saying that his “leadership style and approach did not mesh with Time Inc. and Time Warner.”

As bankers and media executives hammer out the details of creating a new publicly traded company to house the magazine titles of the Meredith Corporation and the lifestyle titles of Time Inc., employees at both companies have been wondering how executives will take on the harder task of merging two very different corporate cultures.

Meredith’s headquarters in Des Moines have an open floor plan; the executives have their offices on the first floor and favor early-morning meetings. A recent lunch at one of Meredith’s magazines featured kale salad and rosemary-infused cucumber lemonade. Time executives tend toward lunches at Michael’s, where the dry-aged steak is a highlight, and after-work cocktails at the Lamb’s Club.

And then there are the postrecessionary approaches to travel: Meredith’s chief executive turned its corporate jets into shuttles with open seating, while Time still allows staff members to expense hotel rooms at the Four Seasons.

“It’s like the Yankees’ farm team taking over the Yankees,” according to a current Time Inc. executive who, like many who talked about the merger, declined to be identified while criticizing bosses or potential bosses.

The merger news appears to be more troubling to employees at the long revered Time Inc., whose lucrative titles like People and InStyle have been essentially sold off by Time Warner and are likely to be overseen by Meredith’s chief executive, Stephen M. Lacy. Time Inc. employees have made cracks about Des Moines and shared more sobering fears about the merger.

And unanswered questions swirl around the offices: Will Time Inc.’s Cooking Light and its fierce rival at Meredith, Eating Well, be expected to share intelligence? Can celebrity titles like People and InStyle flourish sharing a publisher with Wood magazine? And, most important of all, how many former Time Inc. executives might be moved to Iowa?

Press officers for both Time and Meredith declined to comment about any specific negotiations. But an earlier effort to blend Meredith’s folksy culture with the titans of Time failed quickly.

In August 2010, Mr. Griffin became the first chief executive to join Time Inc. from outside the company. His efforts to restructure some of the company’s entrenched hierarchy and infuse his management experiences from Meredith were largely rebuffed. While he garnered praise for the holiday party, staff members bristled when Mr. Griffin, a marathon runner, introduced 7:30 a.m. breakfast meetings — similar to the daily meetings he attended at Meredith, but a shock to the culture at Time Inc., where late nights on deadline are typical.

But this time, Time and Meredith are blending the titles that magazine industry executives say are more compatible. Time is holding onto the older titles that gave the company its gravitas, like Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. The new company will include titles it created or purchased in recent decades, like the cash cows People and InStyle and smaller titles like Southern Living and This Old House.

Both companies also have major workforces beyond their home cities. Only 3,000 of Time Inc.’s nearly 8,000 employees are based in New York City, with offices in London and Birmingham, Ala. Meredith has its 1,000 magazine employees split evenly between its midtown offices on Third Avenue and its headquarters in Des Moines.

“If you take Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated from the mix, you have much greater similarity to the titles that are left than differences,” said Peter Kreisky, who worked as a senior adviser to Mr. Griffin at Time Inc. and who also has advised Meredith in the past.

Maxim Magazine Focuses on Military, Veterans and Their Families

Maxim, a testosterone-fueled magazine featuring adolescent humor and plenty of scantily clad actresses, has become for today’s Army what Esquire was to soldiers fighting in World War II and Playboy was during the Vietnam War.

“They’ve got hot chicks, guns, cars, trucks, a little bit of everything,” said Christopher May, a 38-year-old master sergeant in the Marines based at Camp Pendleton in California. He decided to compete in the contest, sponsored by the magazine, to enhance his credibility with younger officers who are die-hard Maxim fans.

On a recent December day in Crawfordsville, 20 miles west of Memphis, as he sat at a barracks table littered with Maxim magazines and cleaned his .45-caliber Remington pistol, he said that Maxim was “the most common magazine hanging around” during his eight deployments. That popularity isn’t an accident. The magazine has focused on the military, veterans and their families as a source of growing readership.

In 2013, Maxim hopes to turn its annual “Salute to the Military” issue — which includes content like how to approach dating after losing a limb in combat and highlights of celebrities who have served in the military — into a quarterly publication. Maxim will continue to work with the U.S.O. on military-sponsored events. It also will continue to run the Maximum Warrior contest, and will use videos from the event online and on the Maxim Xbox app.

The unabashed celebration of the military sets Maxim apart from many mainstream publications. Matt Willette, a 42-year-old special operations manager for ATK Tactical Systems — Blackhawk, provided the uniforms for the Maximum Warrior competition because he said the company wanted to reach military consumers who often buy their own gear. Mr. Willette, who served in the Army from 1988 to 1996, also likes Maxim’s pro-military approach.

“Most guys in the military have not been treated well by the media,” Mr. Willette said. “So when we do find one like Maxim, we want to embrace it.”

When the editor in chief, Dan Bova, meets members of the military, he says, they have read the magazine so thoroughly that they quote back to him the magazine’s jokes and photo captions. They send letters thanking Maxim for cheering them up during hospital stays as they recover from losing limbs. They also have sent photographs posing with Maxim in a claustrophobic snow cave near the Arctic Circle, in a combat zone while wearing night-vision goggles, and outside Saddam Hussein’s bombed-out palaces.

In the January issue, Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Dyk submitted a photograph of himself and his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan with the following note: “Would have liked to have gotten a better angle showing the valley, but we’d been engaged by Taliban that day and couldn’t really stand up to get a better shot!”

Maxim still lags behind Men’s Health, the fitness bible, which was the top-selling magazine year to date at Army and Air Force exchanges, but Maxim has been very successful at penetrating the broader military culture.

Three-quarters of Maxim’s surveyed readers say they have friends or family who are serving in the military or are veterans, according to data tracked by Fresh Intelligence, a market research firm, and the magazine sells particularly well around military bases.

Karl Erickson, host of the Maximum Warrior series and a retired member of the Army’s Green Berets, who served from 1985 to 2010, said that Maxim’s cheeky humor and attractive women resonated with soldiers better than any other magazine.

“Overseas, you’re living in your body armor and you’re within arm’s reach of your weapon at all times,” Mr. Erickson said. “Any chance you can relax and put a smile on your face, you jump at it, and Maxim magazine does do that better than anyone else.”