Is it the economy or is it the realisation that a magazine subscription model is not sustainable?
I will have to let you make up your mind on that but what I can tell you is subscriptions at Hort Week have fallen around ten percent in the period for the 1st July 2008 to 30th June 2009.
Audited figures from ABC reveal that total average net circulation fell 128 copies in the 12 month period 2007/08 from 9,579 to 9,451 copies in 2008/09.
Analysis for a single distribution on the 28th May 2008:
Total Net Circulation 9,119 (8,690 UK) (429 other)
Analysis for a single distribution on the 27th May 2009:
Total Net Circulation 9,045 (8,724 UK) (321 other)
Although the net UK figure for single copy sales for 27th May 2009 shows to have risen by 34 copies, further analysis reveals that the amount of full rate sales has fallen 956 copies from the corresponding date a year earlier.
The number of single (discounted) copy magazines sold at between 50-100% face cover value rose by 104 copies from 2,132 to 2,236 copies.
Multi-copy subscription sales fell from 160 to 143 with 61 of them getting discounts of between 50-100%.
The amount of copies that Hort Week (Haymarket Publications) gave away (free) on the 27th May 2009, rose by a staggering 963 copies.
All in all these figures are not good for Hort Week and represent over a 10% fall in paying subscribers. So, it begs the question, what can be done to stop the rot?
Advertisers will be getting diminished reach into their target markets and I would suspect that they will be looking carefully at these figures and trying to understand if the current advertising rates are still worthwhile.
I have sent my figures to Hort Week for comment.
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