How Did Your Favorite Magazine Fare In The First Half Of This Year?

by Justin Fenner | 6:30 pm, August 10th, 2011

Fashion magazines have different interpretation of the latest trends, but one trend almost every big glossy is following these days is decreasing newsstand sales.

With the exception of Vogue (because Anna just has it like that) every major fashion book suffered lower newsstand sales during the first six months of 2011, according to a report by the Audit Bureau of Circulations. And Vogue would have been on the list of magazines with falling sales, too, if it hadn’t been for Lady Gaga. To see just how poorly the other magazines in this category did, take a look at the slideshow below.

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1.Vogue

Women's Wear Daily reported that the March 2011 issue of Vogue, which featured Gaga in a dress by Haider Ackermann on the cover, sold 100,000 more copies than the March 2010 issue featuring funny lady Tina Fey. Overall, Vogue saw a 12.7 percent increase, selling an average of 360,400 issues.

2.InStyle

The magazine with one of the biggest ad page increases for the all-important September issue fell 8 percent. But it still sold an average of 570,272 copies of each issue.

3.Marie Claire

Joanna Coles, meanwhile, is struggling. Her magazine has had a 21.5 percent decrease to just under 200,000 issues sold. It's the largest percentage point decrease for any magazine in this slideshow.

4.Glamour

Conde Nast's secret moneymaker isn't faring much better. It's single-copy sales were down 17.5 percent, to an average of 453,707 issues. Not surprisingly, the Kim Kardashian cover from February has been the best seller so far this year.

5.Harper's Bazaar

Editor-in-chief Glenda Bailey admitted that taking risks with cover stars is part of what drove her sales down 14.3 percent to an average of 137,117. She told Women's Wear Daily she "tried stars that were a little outside of the norm for us, and they didn’t always translate into newsstand sales."

6.People StyleWatch

It's September ad sales may have blown us out of the water, but its newsstand sales over the last six months have left a lot to be desired. StyleWatch 11.8 percent to 504,504.

7.W

Does anyone really buy W on the newsstand? While most of its readers are loyal subscribers, its normally lackluster newsstand sales dropped 11.8 percent to just over 19,000.

8.Elle

Down, down, down. Elle dropped 9 percent to just over a quarter of a million sales of each issue. We hear the Katy Perry cover was a hot seller, though.

9.Lucky

Last but certainly not least (not that that's saying a lot in these circumstances) Lucky dropped 9 percent to 150,000 newsstand sales per month. Not so lucky, huh?