{"id":64426,"date":"2015-11-09T21:53:26","date_gmt":"2015-11-10T03:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=64426"},"modified":"2015-11-09T21:53:26","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T03:53:26","slug":"flare-among-magazines-seeing-sales-challenges-at-the-newsstands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/11\/09\/flare-among-magazines-seeing-sales-challenges-at-the-newsstands\/","title":{"rendered":"Flare among magazines seeing sales challenges at the newsstands"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Flare's<\/a>
Flare’s December issue cover (Photo from Flare’s official Facebook page<\/a>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

TORONTO \u2013 The New Year will usher in a new look on Canadian newsstands as the venerable fashion magazine Flare disappears from the racks and turns its focus towards targeting a younger demographic both online and offline.<\/p>\n

Sales of single copies of printed magazines have fallen dramatically, forcing the industry to re-evaluate distribution and adapt, says Bo Sacks, president of the U.S.-based consulting firm Precision Media Group.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the last five years, we have lost 50 per cent of the newsstand sale. And that is a trend that\u2019s not going away,\u201d says Sacks.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery year, we seem to lose nine to 11 per cent of the sales we used to have before. This is a trend that seems inescapable. At what point does it plateau? I have no idea. But it doesn\u2019t look like anytime soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flare is currently averaging 1,800 copies sold on newsstands, which is less than 2.5 per cent of its total circulation, says Melissa Ahlstrand, group publisher for fashion and beauty at Rogers Communications Inc. (RCI).<\/p>\n

\u201cEssentially with those kinds of numbers on newsstands, we really had to take a good look at how we distribute our print copies. It\u2019s a very small quantity,\u201d Ahlstrand says, adding that Flare will still publish 10 print editions in 2016 for subscribers.<\/p>\n

Data provided from the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) revealed that Flare had average monthly newsstand sales of 2,658 copies in the first half of the year, while 27,825 monthly digital sales represented 28.9 per cent of Flare\u2019s total paid circulation.<\/p>\n

Ahlstrand says millennial readers aren\u2019t regular newsstand buyers, and in an effort to connect with \u201cyoung, cool, smart women\u201d they\u2019ve decided to invest in another form of print distribution to reach that demographic: distributing overrun copies in urban centres.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhere we may lose the visibility in newsstands \u2013 albeit small \u2013 we\u2019re actually gaining a lot more visibility through this alternative distribution.\u201d<\/p>\n

Across the industry, a comparative analysis of 56 Canadian titles found overall paid and verified circulation was down 4.8 per cent for the first half of 2014 compared to the first half of 2013, according to AAM. Verified circulation includes subscription copies designed for readership in public places, like those in waiting rooms, hotel rooms or by airlines.<\/p>\n

While single-copy sales saw a three per cent increase, paid subscriptions were down 10.1 per cent.<\/p>\n

D.B. Scott, who blogs at Canadian Magazines, says that while the absence of newsstand copies may be an inconvenience for some, they represent a small subset of readers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen your single copy sales shrink from 8,000 or 10,000 to a couple of thousand that\u2019s a much less effective means of marketing than it had traditionally been,\u201d says Scott, president of Impresa Communications, which specializes in consulting for the magazine and newspaper industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere probably is a line that a magazine crosses where it is no longer effective, and it is a very expensive thing to maintain a single-copy strategy if it\u2019s not achieving its principle goal \u2013 which is to get you new subscribers.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Sacks argues the newsstand is still \u201ccritical to the long-term survival of magazines,\u201d despite the drop in sales.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is where people discover magazines,\u201d says Sacks. \u201cSure, you can save a lot of money by eliminating your print title. But long-term, discoverability becomes a much bigger problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the recent FIPP World Congress for magazine media in Toronto, there was considerable discussion about the change in industry culture, says Rowland Lorimer, founder of the Canadian Institute for Studies in Publishing at Simon Fraser University.<\/p>\n

\u201cThroughout the large magazine sector, they’re all talking about changing their understanding of the new model from a periodical publishing to more or less continuous publishing in all kinds of ways. Not just a snippet on Twitter or a very short article, but actually making articles available, enhancing them with video and so on. It\u2019s a major change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TORONTO \u2013 The New Year will usher in a new look on Canadian newsstands as the venerable fashion magazine Flare …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":64427,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-64426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fashion-and-beauty","tag-original","mauthors-lauren-la-rose","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}