Which Celeb Cover Resulted In A Huge Sales Boost?

by Justin Fenner | 11:45 am, November 5th, 2010

For fashion magazines, a single September issue can make or break the year. The Audit Board of Circulation‘s Rapid Report, which counts the number of single-copy sales of each magazine, lets us know just how well the glossies fared. On top was Jennifer Aniston‘s cover for Harper’s Bazaar. Sales of that book rose 22 percent, no doubt spurred by the unretouched photos of her that surfaced mid-August. It’ll be interesting to see if the magazine can sustain the same kind of sales sans-scandal next year.

Right behind were Jennfier Lopez‘s cover of Glamour and Mary-Kate Olsen’s cover for Marie Claire, both of which posted about one percent gains compared with last year’s sales.

Most other fashion magazines experienced newsstand losses — Stefano Tonchi‘s first September issue of W was hit the worst, and Elle, InStyle and Vogue each sustained considerable losses.

To find out just how well (or not so well) your favorite fashion magazine did, check out the gallery below.

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1.Harper's Bazaar

Jennifer Aniston's cover had the best increase by far of all the the big titles, racking up 255,000 sales. That's a 22 percent increase over last year, which certainly bodes well for Glenda Bailey and company, but the sales were more than likely egged on by controversy surrounding pre-Photoshop pictures of Anniston.

2.Glamour

Jennifer Lopez's cover sent Glamour up to 642,000 copies sold, a one percent increase for the year. The magazine had the biggest increase in ad pages for its September issue, so it's definitely been a good year for this book.

3.Marie Claire

Mary-Kate Olsen helped this title get to 338,237 copies sold, about a one percent increase from last year. It'll be interesting to see how well this magazine does next year as Joanna Coles continues to edge out the competition.

4.W

This is where things start looking grim. Stefano Tonchi's first cover for W, which featured a group of actresses expected to do well in Hollywood, did not do so well itself. Sales fell 14 percent to only 30,000 copies.

5.Elle

Julia Roberts' cover for Elle was lovely, but that didn't mean lovely sales. Only 390,000 copies left the newsstands, a loss of 10 percent from last year.

6.InStyle

Hilary Swank sent 800,000 copies home with newsstand shoppers. Even though it's the highest number of sales among the biggest fashion glossies, it still constituted a six percent loss in sales from last year.

7.Vogue

Anna Wintour's selection of Halle Berry for this cover was hailed as a great move and represented a little more color getting into fashion's most important magazine. But that sentiment apparently didn't resonate with newsstand buyers, who only bought 540,000 copies of the magazine, 5.5 percent fewer than last year.