Overview of the Magazine Industry

In Britain there are more than 8000 titles which are organised in categories such as:

1.     Consumer (general and specialist) sold in newsagents and available online;

2.     Business / trade / professional / B2B - for people at work;

3.     Customer magazines that organisations to give to their customers as a form of marketing;

4.     Staff magazines to inform staff about their company

5.     Newspaper supplements- come free as part of daily or Sunday paper;

6.     Part works - a set number of issues builds up into an 'encyclopaedia' on a specific topic;

7.     Academic journals - for university-level discussion of all sorts of arcane topics.

The masthead of the magazine may be general titles that aim to entertain and inform, for example Elle, Radio Times, Glamour or there is a consumer specialist titles that are aimed at specific interest or hobbies, for example Car, Total Film, Gardeners’ World etc.

The biggest consumer magazine publishers
Bauer Publishing – 25%
IPC Media – 20%
BBC – 7.8%
Hearst – 7.3%

In 1980 there were only 1,383 different consumer titles however now there are over 3,200.
1.4 billion magazines are sold each year, it was 2.1 billion in 1970 and 1.2 billion in 1992.
85% of population reads a magazine.

Advertisers spent £745 million in magazines.

Consumers spend £2 billion on magazines annually.

An average 500 new magazines have been launched every year in the past decade.

Only 3 in 10 titles survive for more than 4 years.

Facebook is the indisputable leader in terms of page likes in the magazine industry, totalling 198 million of page likes. Instagram comes 4th, with 20 million of followers, and right after Pinterest with 19 million.