Magazines halt fall in sales figures

By Karyn Scherer

Latest sales figures for magazines returned smiles to publishers' faces.

After one of their worst years last year, publishers are celebrating an apparent bounce back. Official figures show increases across most major titles for the six months to the end of June.

Dozens of New Zealand's most popular titles saw their sales plummet last year - a trend blamed on the tough economy, competition from overseas titles, and a growing number of new titles.

While publications such as Cuisine, Next, NZ House & Garden, NZ PC World and NZ Net Guide have continued to buck the declining trend of the past few years, most publishers were optimistic yesterday that the industry might be seeing payback from major revamps.

New Zealand's largest magazine publisher, Australian Consolidated Press, said it was particularly pleased by the figures, which come after a tumultuous year for the company, including a swathe of redundancies, resignations and restructuring.

Although two of its titles, Fashion Quarterly and Cleo continue to disappoint, several, including Woman's Day, She, Metro and North & South have had their first increases for several years.

ACP managing director Bruce Cotterill said the company was encouraged by a strong growth in subscriptions.

Wilson & Horton publications the Listener and the New Zealand Woman's Weekly appear to have stabilised after several years of decline.

Meanwhile, at INL Magazines, NZ House & Garden is continuing to boom and another gardening title, NZ Growing Today, has also increased its sales. But its flagship publication, NZ Gardener, showed one of the biggest declines over the six months.

Sales of its new women's magazine, Grace, have also fallen significantly to less than 20,000 copies in an average month.

In the fiercely competitive women's magazine market, Pacific Magazines' New Idea is continuing to gain on its rivals. Most of its other magazines remained stable, although TV Hits had a fall in sales.

Many publishers are wary of being over-optimistic, with many magazines yet to fully recover from last year's falls.

NZ Home & Entertaining, Australian Women's Weekly, Fashion Quarterly, Cleo, Style, Reader's Digest, Girlfriend, She and Metro have all suffered large falls over the past 12 months.