Is Reading Fashion Magazines On An iPad Already Out?

by Justin Fenner | 1:44 pm, December 29th, 2010

Turns out the people who thought the iPad was going to save magazines from impending financial ruin might have spoken too soon. All the magazines that report their iPad mag sales to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (the tracking agency that keeps tabs on how many copies of Vogue we buy from CVS every month) have experienced a sales slump — and big-name fashion magazines are no exception.

Vanity Fair sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from its average of about 10,500 for the August, September and October issues. Glamour sold 4,301 digital editions in September, but sales dropped 20 percent in October and then another 20 percent, to 2,775, in November. GQ’s November edition sold 11,000 times, which was its worst performance since April (when the iPad was released) and represents a slight decline from its average digital sales of 13,000 between May and October.

Esquire is available as an app, too, but like People and The New Yorker, it doesn’t report its iPad numbers to the ABC. We’re guessing magazines that don’t report (and non-fashion magazines that do) are similarly afflicted. Wired went from 100,000 sales of its app in June to 13,000 for October and November. Men’s Health has remained a little steadier, but still dropped from an average of 2,800 sales in the spring to 2,000 for both September and October.

The math behind magazine sales will always be a bit of a mystery to us (primarily because we’re bloggers and not accountants) but what we do know is that for every one Glamour app sold on the iPad, there are thousands that go into women’s hands all over the country — partly because they love Glamour and partly because the want other people to know that they love Glamour. The same goes for the rest of our favorite glossy titles, and we don’t think that peacock-ish tendency will ever go away. And for all the cool, interactive features available on the iPad, showing off your brand loyalty is one thing you just can’t do.

Memo Pad: iPad Magazine Sales Drop [WWD]

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