ABCs: Monthly mags stay strong, but not in fashion

Lifestyle and food are hot, driven by high volume titles like Australian Home Beautiful, Real Living and Delicious leading the charge, but fashion is not with some famous brands suffering heavy drops.

All 17 of the titles tracked by B&T in the latest round of figures to post positive growth are published on a monthly, or longer, cycle.

Pacific Magazines’ flagship Better Homes and Gardens held dead even, and Australian Home Beautiful shifted almost 7,000 more copies, an 8.9% year-on-year increase.

To view a table of the latest figures click here.

However, Marie Claire went back 7.7%, while InStyle was down 7.1% and Girlfriend by 12.6%

NewsLifeMedia will also be satisfied with its food and lifestyle portfolio, with Delicious up 5% y-o-y (115,621) and Donna Hay getting a 0.2% boost in hard copy sales, while Vogue Australia also lifted by 0.4%.

But, whilst Superfood Ideas remains as number one in the food category it lost a hefty 13.9% in print y-o-y, with 170,396 copies shifted. But that decline is eclipsed by the 19% drop seen by Woolworths Good Taste magazine, equating to more than 19,000 less copies sold per month as it slipped to 82,002.

However, CEO Nicole Sheffield pointed to the continued growth of tablet formats, with the publisher boasting two of the three largest, showing a shift of consumers to digital methods, with Donna Hay Australia’s best-selling digital magazine with 12,340 digital copies per issue, and Super Food Ideas adding 5,799 to its run per edition.

Bauer Media’s extensive catalogue suffered a mixed bag of results, with fashion mags Cleo and Cosmopolitan both suffering large drops, 17.4% and 17.5% respectively, with Cleo falling to 76,163 and Cosmo 98,294, while teen mag Dolly declining 12.8% to 80,315 copies.

But CEO Matt Stanton said: “We have invested heavily in Cleo and Cosmopolitan to better reflect the interests of their target demographic. With changes introduced in the May (Cleo) and June (Cosmo) issues, we expect to see the impact in coming audits.”

Flagship title Australian Women’s Weekly continues to be the most-bought magazine in the country, shifting on average 459,175 copies, a 1.4% decline on the same quarter last year for the monthly, whilst Belle enjoyed a resurgence gaining 7.3% to 44,534.

Stanton said while the publisher has yet to put any digital editions up for audit they have sold 150,000 in the last six months, claiming with digital copies the AWW’s total masthead sales are 468,343.

The publisher will also be hoping moving monthly Shop Till You Drop to fortnightly publication will arrest its audience drop, which was 9.6% in this quarter, with 65,198 copies sold.

Frankie Magazine continued to enjoy good growth, getting a 10.7% lift selling 64,931 copies for small publisher Morrison Media, while The Monthly held steady dipping 0.3% to 30,955, showing strength in the independent publishing sector.

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