Amid print circulation and readership declines, you may wonder if the news claiming print is dead is true.
It’s true that print has been through some tough times. The fast pace at which the digital world is evolving only fuels the fire for online content, but demand for the paper form is still strong.
Better Homes and Gardens is still read by over 2 million people, while the Australian Women’s Weekly is sitting at 1.99 million, based on Emma readership figures June 2016. Taste.com.au recorded 26.31% growth vs. year ago and GQ is up 18.18%, but for some reason it seems the media is still obsessed with news about declines in the printed magazines.
Let’s compare this to the book publishing industry. When Amazon first launched the Kindle, in 2007, the device sold out within hours. Demand was so high that Amazon ran out of stock for many months. Consumers were delighted at the development of one of the first convenient and travel-friendly e-readers, designed for use whenever and wherever you wanted to read a book.
That said, digital books now represent around 20% of the book publishing industry in Australia. Printed books have survived through challenging times and are just as popular now as they were before e-readers were even thought of. And with the eight generation Kindle launching only recently, ongoing book sales prove there is a time, a place and a desire for both.
A staggering $547 million worth of magazines are sold every year, based on AMAA Circulation data 12 months to June 2016 - that’s 3.2 copies every single second. Clearly we still yearn for our coffee table glossies and enjoy the regular subscription magazine delivered direct to our door every month. Magazines inform, engage and inspire readers to purchase products and to share the content they discover. It’s not surprising that the more a magazine is picked up and read, the higher the ad recall.
All media has its place, whether books, newspapers, magazines, digital channels or a combination of the above. Readers are driven by quality journalism, not necessarily what format it is delivered in.
Mary Ann Azer is executive director Magazine Networks