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Things are not good for magazines right now. The recent ABC figures published by The Press Gazette are pretty shocking in their drops. These figures represent circulation – the number of people reading the magazines. I’ve pulled out a few that are most relevant to us.
| Glamour | 400,371 | -14.8% |
| Cosmopolitan | 300,255 | -15.0% |
| HELLO! | 281,831 | -20.2% |
| Marie Claire | 230,973 | -9.4% |
| Red | 202,463 | -10.5% |
| Look | 200,265 | -19.9% |
| Vogue | 193,007 | -5.9% |
| Elle (U.K.) | 170,286 | -10.2% |
| Grazia | 168,030 | -11.6% |
| Instyle UK | 147,219 | -9.9% |
| Harpers Bazaar | 112,895 | -5.3% |
| Essentials | 111,333 | -6.5% |
| Company | 90,726 | -36.7% |
| Vanity Fair | 88,377 | -12.2% |
| Tatler | 84,285 | -3.1% |
| Psychologies Magazine | 73,357 | -20.5% |
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What, in hard fact terms this represents is more job losses for excellent writers and that’s something that nobody wants to see.
It’s not as though nobody knows why this is happening – I don’t often stick up for print because I live on-line mainly – but behind the scenes are the corporates who understand absolutely nothing about how emotional connection plays a part in women’s love of magazines. The flick of a page – and they all have that ‘new magazine’ smell – is something that will resonate with all of us I think. You can’t get that on-line! So, at the top level – and we can’t get away from the fact that it’s mostly men, because it is a fact – they’re implementing processes and cost-saving and pouring over stats and figures but quite literally have no clue about the intuitive and emotive nature of loyalty. They leave all the content to understaffed (mostly women in the fashion and beauty magazine sector) editorial departments and then complain when circulation goes down. They really don’t care what is in the magazine as long as it sells enough to make a decent profit. But the writers do. They really care about what goes into their pages.
Publishers looking to on-line with a magazine head – which doesn’t work – will listen to anyone and everyone they perceive to be an ‘expert’ and yet they have their own experts just sitting right there (who they’re getting rid of by the shed-load); the writers who know how to connect. It’s the understanding and implementation of emotional connection that will bring readers and loyalty; it goes back to gathering people, not numbers – the top likes the numbers no matter how irrelevant, while the writers understand the people. Those responsible for the fall in circulation are those who think writing for women is about processes, streamlining, selling and creating writing factories that allow no time for creative thinking. A good magazine editor or writer will always ensure they over-deliver: they will always make it the best it can possibly be. At the top, over-delivery is a no-no because for a magazine writer today, their time is managed so tightly and because their creativity isn’t controllable, it’s not valued at all. Anything you can’t legitimately fill in on a time-flow chart isn’t acceptable at top level.
And yet… many magazines can’t afford to run separate web and editorial teams because the magazines aren’t making enough money and nor are the websites. Today I’ve seen digital paper.. yes, my brain nearly exploded.. but it’s going to exist (google it) so there is a digital future for magazines but perhaps not in the way that anyone thinks.
Everyone in the print industry knows this and yet the right people don’t care. I haven’t bought a magazine for at least a year but I can tell you right now, I’m buying some tomorrow. Whether magazines and editors are pro or anti-bloggers (a lot are openly anti) I don’t want to see great beauty, fashion and life-style writers with no jobs through absolutely no fault of their own because they’re too busy filling in their work flow chart and not left to do the thing they do best – provide good content and connect with readers. It’s also rather insulting to readers – that the publishers deem it acceptable to only allow their writers time for sub-par or rushed content – and then they wonder why blogging has taken off as it has. Head-desk, head-desk, head-desk.
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22 comments
This is terribly sad and very worrying. I don’t want to get into the whole online vs print thing here too much (I’m so tired of it) but I grew up knowing that I wanted to work in fashion and beauty (the writing bit came later) because of glossy magazines. I would sit on the end of my parents bed as a child on a Sunday morning, staring at pages and pages of beauty and fashion shoots in The Sunday Times Style.
It seems that despite the growth of digital media, magazines are veering away from artistic, stand out photography and intelligent, longer articles and veering more towards shorter and dare I say it more blog-like content… but getting it all wrong and coming across as patronising more than friendly and chatty. If I want to read a blog I have thousands to choose from and I love them all, but I don’t want the same experience when I pick up a magazine. It’s a bigger investment of my time (and money!) and I want creative, intelligent prose and beautifully shot imagery – which I feel is becoming more and more scant the bigger the blogosphere becomes.
Print can never compete with blogs with relation to timescale and responsiveness, but they can on so many other levels.
That said, I will be going and buying a handful of mags today to help support them today!
Sorry for this stupidly long train of though and words…
This is so well put – totally agree with you. I love the experience of reading a mag having grown up reading them and wanting to be a writer becuase of them. And the photography and design and expertise behind them is what sets them apart – I just wish they’d see that and stop trying to be so social and blog-friendly as that’s such a different thing.
I think magazines are going to have to change radically or disappear. I hope and expect it is the former. But they don’t have any easy options, so it will be interesting to see how it pans out. I am not remotely an expert but I am pretty sure that whatever else they do, they are going to need good writing. So they need to hold onto the good journalists.
Fascinating figures. I love magazines – always have, always will – and really hope that those on the list above can recover from dramatic drops in circulation.
The issue now is that weekly magazines have no function (when blogs and the Daily Mail gossip section brings you news instantly,) and monthlies haven’t changed their style in years. The last time I picked up Elle I genuinely thought I was reading a 3mth old magazine because I thought the news was so ‘old’ – it wasn’t but I’d just read it the day after it happened.
Here’s hoping someone gives those big bosses a kick up the backside.
I used to read cosmo & glamour religiously but honestly the amount of ads in each put me off completely. You had to sift through about 6 pages of them before you even got to the contents and then there was many scattered throughout. For a £3.20 magazine that really is not on, id much rather read something online than pay a ridiculous price for a load of ads. And not only are there print ads, there are even more articles plugging a product or a company e.g. tampax or revlon and unlike blogs, they do not have a ‘sponsored post’ disclaimer and i have more than once bought something on their recommendation when in actual fact, if i read it properly the whole article just recommended products from that one brand – they need to work on what their readers want to see and adjust or the online world will slowly take over.
I know someone who writes for a monthly mag – she states that every page of ads means another page of writing. Without the ads, you can’t have the articles.
I agree with everything you’re saying here, although I haven’t bought a magazine (apart from a subscription to Vanity Fair) for the best part of two years. The content is just not engaging enough, for me, anyway. I recently read a friend’s copy of magazine and it was like nothing had changed in the last five or ten years. The same uninspiring features: “How to get the job you really want!”, “20 great celebrity hair moments”, “Embarrassing sex stories!” – I mean, we’re not talking about a teen weekly here, this was one of the top 5 listed above.
I don’t doubt that a lot of magazine journalists are talented writers but you so rarely see that reflected in the features that they run. The other problem, of course, is that it’s hard to justify the money on magazines when almost all the content can be found online, at least a month beforehand.
I completely understand and appreciate the beauty of print, and those gorgeous fashion and beauty spreads, but that’s just not enough for me anymore. I never buy anything that’s featured in a magazine – fashion is too ££ and the beauty is usually just glorified ads for products I know are sub-standard – so what am I buying? A few old and tired articles that I have read 25 times or more, just with a different strapline?
It’s a huge shame. I think the typical glossies need to take more inspiration from feature-led magazines. Marie Claire, in my opinion, has the most success in tackling a wide range of topics, and some magazines do really great photojournalism pieces but they’re rare.
I feel like the online media has really tuned in to what a lot of women nowadays want to read about, i.e. not the Kardashians or how to make cupcakes, but print, for the most part, seems to be taking a while to redress the balance.
This is such a shame -I love print magazines
I have shifted to kindle for books but when I’ve tried digitsl magazines on ipad it’s not as nice as a print one
Although cost and time is a factor – I used to get quite a few but had to cut back as didnt get a chance to read them – also there were too many ads for the price paid for a monthly glossy
Nicola xx
great comment Jane. Excellent.
Glad to see so many others have stopped getting Company recently – I used to love it and then it got so… self-consciously cool? I don’t know, it just rubbed me up the wrong way. Was buying it religiously, then subscribed, then… didn’t renew my subscription.
Worrying times though, given I want to make my living writing in this industry.
Lily, I too loved Company but I know exactly where you are coming from. I now feel too old at 27 to read that magazine since it changed its style. It’s one that has tried to embrace the blog culture and seems to be getting it all wrong in my opinion. Unfortunately, I work in the newspaper print industry and we are not immune to these issues. It’s a shame, resources are also stretched to the limit and sales are a fighting battle.
I buy Grazia every week ( I did have a subscription for years but stopped it after I decided not to get it every week as it was getting a bit ‘strange’ lots of articles about Americans) but anyway I now just buy it every week. I had been buying EASY LIVING which had been a fantastic magazine but then they got a new editor and it’s not as good, however I can’t find a current copy of it anywhere! I like paper and won’t stop buying magazines but they are getting repetitive and can be out of date while they sit on the shelf, countless Kim K, Jen Anniston and Brangelina articles are flauted about and bore the life out of me.
I think Easy Living ceased publishing in paper, not sure about online
@Angela: Easy Living folded a couple of months ago I believe
@Jane: Well said. Another factor is that with less time to file copy (as these writers are so squeezed), the writers find themselves at their computers researching stories instead of getting out and about doing original reporting. Hence they all come up with the same ideas having sourced their stories on Perez Hilton, Daily Mail, blogs etc. Where is the unique point of view?
Those people complaining about ads in magazines. Well I know they’re annoying but oh boy, those sites with a gazillion flashing ads and skins are ten times worse!
I still love a good magazine but it’s so hard to find one that satisfies. The problem is with the content which needs to be exclusive and fresh but is so often tired and repetative. I don’t need another beauty feature on classic beauty products or top 100 products. It has been many years since I’ve looked at a fashion editorial and seen an item that I actually wanted to buy or could afford to buy. Plus I’ve moved on, I want to know about the latest Android operating system v Apple and I’m addicted to the Honest John motoring column in the Saturday Daily Telegraph.
The number of magazine titles available exploded 20 years ago so a contraction may be a return to the norm.
I find this whole issue really difficult. Like Joy mentioned above, I grew up reading magazines and that is why I wanted to go into magazine journalism from an early age. I remember the excitement bubbling when I got to the shopping pages and my eyes darted around the page picking what I’d buy with my next pay cheque. I then got my first job in magazine journalism and worked in that world for 5 years until I joined the world of national papers. I remember those days so fondly and completely agree that the writers / stylists put their heart and soul into their work. I remember the terrible sinking feel of being made redundant on one publication (having been headhunted a few weeks beforehand to join them) when a man in a suit decided he didn’t need half of the staff any more.
On the other hand, I am now a consumer and can say that I buy magazines very, very rarely. It’s always for a train journey, flight, or holiday – and it’s always usually weekly magazines like OK or Grazia that I can dip in and out of. I can’t say that I’ve bought a monthly magazine for years and years – but on a recent holiday, I read a few of my friends that she’d bought with her. I just felt I had read everything before. The features were just dull and pointless – maybe it’s my age, but I wouldn’t say I was too old for magazines like Company and Red at 32, but based on the content, I really was…
I used to love styling fashion shoots and fashion is my passion but I skimmed straight past the fashion shoots until I reached the still-life pages (which cost a fraction of the price to shoot). I dont think I can be the only one that does this – I can’t really see the clothes and the vast majority of the time, they are way out of my price range and impractical too. think it’s probably time fashion departments responded to this and saved money by shooting still-life only – I know quite a few of the fashion departments I used to work for have taken this route already.
It’s difficult as I want the magazines on the shelves – well, certainly the weekly ones – and feel very upset and cheated if they weren’t there. But the industry can’t survive just for the odd purchase.
I’m another who’s gone off magazines for a couple of reasons; one is the amount of advertising in them. I understand that ads help pay the bills for a magazine as well as being an important source of exposure for the brands buying the advertising space. But its gotten out of hand. The other problem is credibility. Every product or service is gushed over as being the greatest thing since sliced bread. Presumably the writers have no choice in the matter. Negative reviews simply aren’t done or are done rarely. And its more or less the same content and ads in every glossy.
Having said that, some of the beauty and fashion blogs that are supposedly stealing magazine readership are in danger of going down the same road – identical content and how great everything is.
There are exceptions. Red magazine manages, most issues, to keep the ads reasonable and the content credible. Some of their skincare articles are first rate. But I don’t subscribe and only buy if there is an article or articles that I’m really interested in. British Vogue and Harpers Bazaar I buy twice a year, just as an indulgence. I can afford very little of whats in them, but its eye candy and gives me some idea of whats new.
At one time I never thought I’d be converted to e-books, but I made the transition. Whats more, I can often get any genre I fancy cheaper than the physical counterpart. And its environmentally-friendly too. I may not be keeping people in jobs, but I have to look to my own budget. I long ago stopped paying very hard earned money for goods and services that no longer satisfy.
Great post. I love magazines and always will – so many I have loved have disappeared like Marie Claire Beauty (oh how I loved it), Eve and more recently Easy Living.
Great post. I really wanted to make a living in writing for magazines like Glamour or Cosmo but agree with a lot of the comments here. It seems talented writers are pushed into writing rushed content or articles that have been done so many times before. I subscribe to Glamour and I get the need for lots of ads so I don’t mind that, it’s the amount of sponsored pages I dislike. The magazine is full of it now, and there are very few pages dedicated to excellently written, unique and engaging content. That’s definitely something I miss about reading magazines. I often only glance at a few pages now, rather than reading a magazine cover to cover.
I pretty much gave up on magazines when I became a mum and decided I, too, didn’t need to read another article on 100 classic pieces to add to your wardrobe’, or – in the specialist mummy market – ‘why you should bring up your child according to method X, Y or Z’. I will still occasionally buy a special-interest magazine (iPod/ski-ing/travel/knitting/film), if there is something in it I desperately want to read, but that’s increasingly rare, as I don’t have a large disposable income.
My only regular monthly purchase is Vanity Fair, which I started reading while overseas and was surprised that what I had assumed was simply a ‘puff’ magazine for yuppies and hooray Henrys turned out to have superb journalism and fascinating, lengthy articles on subjects that both interested and educated me. (I have VF to thank for explaining to me why the financial bubble burst with such disastrous results, and why the bubble existed in the first place.) It also has excellent, searching interviews with famous people, or biographies of lives, which give real insights into who these people are. (Plus, of course, scandal. Mea Maxima Culpa.)
But I am becoming increasingly annoyed with Vanity Fair these days, as the monthly magazine has dwindled disturbingly, and is now half the size it was five years ago. I don’t actually mind the advertising in it, as long as it means there’s an equal amount of copy, but nowadays at a scrawny 160 pages, VF is literally wearing thin.
When I still lived in the US I always looked forward to getting my fresh issue of Allure magazine aka the The Beauty Bible. I also used to get Cosmo, Glamour etc. but as I was a poor student when I arrived in the UK I couldn’t justify buying so many mags and as I got older they just were relevant to me. Now with blogging I can just look online for reviews, find other people that share my interests etc.
Magazines/Newspapers have always been a one way conversation and now people want to engage and have their voices heard. Plus like many have mentioned in the comments the articles are stale and recycled.
Glamour, Cosmo and similar titles target the 18 – 35 readership. It’s not surprising they are losing circulation – each generation of 18 – 35 year olds will be used to being online so print readership will continue to drop. Aside from that some of these editors are so effing arrogant I would rather spend my money elsewhere.
I LOVE magazines. I spend a LOT of money on them. I download American ones on my ipad but still buy UK ones in print. BUT…I’ve cut that down so much because I am SO bored of the amount of celebrity content magazines rely on. I don’t give two hoots about Jennifer Aniston (who is constantly on front covers), reality tv stars etc. I just don’t care. I want to read a magazine that has decent beauty & fashion coverage, mixed in with stories on current affairs and people who are making a difference.
Someone bought me a 6 month subscription to OK mag for Christmas. I didn’t even open 90% of them & just passed them on.
Grazia – I used to LOVE Grazia but it has dumbed down SO much.
I think that the industry needs a good hard look at itself. Do people really want to pay £4!! for vacuous crap? Or do they want to pay £4 to read some quality articles and actually be informed? Advertising is fine by me as long as it supports quality content.