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Did you forget to stop by the newsstand a few times last year? Don't worry; so did a lot of your fellow Americans. The ongoing decline in magazine single-copy sales accelerated in the second half of 2011, with the losses falling just short of double-digits, according to figures issued today by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
The 28.9 million copies sold at retail between July and December of last year represented a 9.96% year-over-year drop, the fastest rate of decline since 2009. (For the sake of an apples-to-apples comparison, that total excludes sales by magazines that didn't report figures in both periods.) With paid subscriptions -- the channel that accounts for the vast majority of U.S. magazine sales -- rising only 0.72%, the falloff in newsstand sales was enough to drag total magazine circulation down by 1.01%.
Here's the trend from recent years, courtesy of ABC.
June 2011 vs. June 2010
Paid/Verified Circulation down - 1.36%
Single-Copy Sales - down 9.15%
December 2010 vs. December 2009
Paid/Verified Circulation - down 1.15%
Single-Copy Sales - down 7.27%
June 2010 vs. June 2009
Paid/Verified Circulation - down 2.27%
Single-Copy Sales - down 5.63%
December 2009 vs. December 2008
Paid/Verified Circulation - down 2.23%
Single-Copy Sales - down 9.1%
June 2009 vs. June 2008
Paid/Verified Circulation - down 1.19%
Single-Copy Sales - down 12.36%
