Newsstand sales of magazines dropped 10% during the first half of 2013 compared with sales in the first half of 2012 as reported by the Alliance for Audited Meda via The New York Times. This continues a downward trend as newsstand sales of magazines again plummeted by double digits (see "Magazine Sales in Free Fall" for a rundown of very similar declines in the first half of 2012). This time it was celebrity titles like People (down 11.8%) and US Weekly (down 16.7%) that led the way along with Vogue (down 10.4%) and Vanity Fair (down 11%), while Women’s magazines such as Cosmopolitan (down 23.9%), Glamour (down 28.8%), and The Oprah Magazine (down 22.7%) suffered even steeper declinesTotal paid circulation was down 1% as increases in subscription sales, which can be boosted by special promo offers, made up for much of the difference for some magazines like Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Time, which all posted modest gains in total circulation.
The second half of 2013 should get a boost in newsstand sales due to the birth of the Royal baby, but barring a rash of similar highly newsworthy events, there is no reason to expect this long-trending decline in newsstand sales to reverse itself.
So far digital sales of magazines, in spite of promising growth, have proven to be far from a panacea for declining newsstand sales. In spite of solid growth in digital subscriptions for some titles like The Oprah Magazine with posted a 22% rise in digital subscribers and Cosmopolitan, which managed to up its digital subscribers by 33%, digital magazine sales accounted for just 3.3% of all magazine sales in the first half of 2013. While that is nearly doublie the 1.7% they represented in 2012, it is hardly enough to make up for the 10% drop in newsstand sales.
