Magazines such as National Geographic produce special annual bumper editions reflecting a shift to a more ‘artisan era’ for magazines
Are Magazines the New Vinyls?
Being a magazine editor within the print industry, I often wonder if I am biased in my passion for print, being amongst others so aware of the creativity, potential, and crucial role print plays in pretty much every industry there is.
Once you have become immersed in print it is hard to stop noticing it everywhere you go. Just ask anyone in the industry and they will tell the same tale of their family and friends being sick to death of them pointing out posters, signage, special effects in packaging, and so on.
Those ‘in the know’ are aware of the way print can add a special feel to an event, giving people something tangible to take away and keep as a memory, or the way special effects can turn a simple cardboard box into something you want to use as decoration – something I have done with the gift box my perfume came in with the beautiful design and gold foiling making it something I now keep on display.
However, there is still a disconnect between those in the industry and those 'on the outside' with the image of print still being that of traditional business cards and dwindling newspapers, with print thought of by many as a medium that is dying and fading away due to not being really very creative at all.
So, you can imagine my delight when reading national news outlets reporting on a so-called print resurgence akin to that of vinyl records in the music industry.
Both the BBC and The Guardian have published reports in recent months describing printed magazines as making a "vinyl-style comeback" with the launch of new titles and the return of the popular NME printed magazine after the title went digital in 2018.
This raised the question, is print actually experiencing a resurgence? Or is the model shifting as pressures such as the cost of paper, postage, and a decline in advertising continue to threaten the viability of many printed publications in today’s digital age?
To find out, I speak with analysts and experts within publishing as well as one of the UK’s largest magazine publishers to find out whether the much-reported decline in printed magazines is really turning on its head, or whether we are looking at a new era for printed publications as the digital world continues to boom.
Dwindling Circulation Levels
For a number of years now, reports of a decline in magazine and newspaper circulation have been commonplace, with drops in advertising and consumer buying habits creating a perfect storm for publishers and printers alike. This forecast differs slightly between business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) titles due to each serving different purposes and roles for their readers.
Within the B2C sphere, you only have to pay a visit to WH Smith to see there are still a large number of printed magazines on display, despite reports of circulation numbers dropping painting a gloomy picture. The impact is also affecting titles differently with the most recent ABC national newspaper circulation figures reporting the Daily Star Sunday and Sunday People to have experienced the biggest annual declines.
The smallest annual decline was at the Financial Times. In contrast, London business newspaper City AM increased its free distribution by three-quarters compared to the previous summer and The Daily Record was the only paid-for title not to see a month-on-month drop in circulation.
In 2022, Slimming World was the only women’s interest magazine to see its print circulation grow in the UK and Ireland, with Hearst’s Good Housekeeping retaining the highest circulation numbers. On the contrary, Hearst UK titles Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, and Best reported some of the biggest UK and Ireland declines in circulation. Women’s Health, Closer, and Bella reported double-digit declines.
In more positive news, Private Eye grew by 5%, remaining the UK’s biggest news and current affairs magazine. The satirical magazine is only available in print and has reported its best sales since 2017 having continued to grow year-on-year. Following close behind are The Oldie, London Review of Books, and The Spectator as the fastest-growing print news magazines in the ABC figures.
The latter saw a 16% increase in its digital circulation, having lost 9% of its UK and Ireland print subscribers. The Economist retains the highest print circulation with a global circulation of 561,605.
With circulation levels continuing to shift on a regular basis, there has also been a shakeup in the printing of these titles with the closure of Liverpool-based Prinovis in 2022.
As a result, titles such as Heat and Grazia, all the weekly newspaper supplements and magazines for The Times, Sunday Times, and Sun on Sunday, have all been moved over to Walstead UK which prints nine of the top ten magazines in the UK.
In April 2023, Walstead secured a five-year print deal with News UK
On its closure, Prinovis reported a significant decline in the UK magazine market and the increasing cost of paper. With five sites across the UK, Walstead has been referred to by The Guardian as “the last man standing” within large-scale magazine printing in the UK.
So, with this being said, what is the current state of magazine printing in the UK, and if the climate is so tricky, why doesn’t the picture match the reports of circulations crashing with shelves still full of magazines in stores across the country?
The Artisan Era
For Douglas McCabe, chief executive officer and director of Publishing at Enders Analysis, the answer is that print is now entering a new phase of existence. “We think of the industry entering now a long final phase of industrial print. This phase could last five years, it could last ten years, one doesn’t really know. But there is a desire by every publisher to make this runway, this final stage, as long as they possibly can make it.”
This ‘industrial era’ that McCabe alludes to refers to the whole ecosystem around print – getting newspapers and magazines through wholesale processes to 45,000 retailers day in, day out.
“Our argument is that that formula has worked brilliantly for decades, but it has probably at this point entered the final phase of what is possible. You can see the problem when you look at things like lower-level magazine sales, but also lower-level newspaper sales.
“For example, with local newspapers and local weekly newspapers, you’re often getting down to a few hundred copies, and this is going to inevitably become economically unviable at some point.”
With that being said, McCabe predicts the number of closures and losses over the next five years to become accelerated to a much greater level than that of the past five years. This, McCabe says, is creating somewhat of a tipping point to where the whole system starts to feel unviable – something we have already begun to see with the closure of significant printing houses such as Prinovis.
Instead of print having a resurgence, doesn’t this mean it is heading to a halt? No, McCabe says, but it will take on a new format. “In answer to the question ‘When does print finish?’, the answer is ‘absolutely, unequivocally never’. It never finishes. There is no such thing as the end of print. Print will be here forever, but it will be a slightly more artisan product than it has been over the last 50 years.”
There is no such thing as the end of print. Print will be here forever, but it will be a slightly more artisan product than it has been over the last 50 years”
What McCabe is describing is a move from the industrial era to the artisan era which he predicts will happen around 2030/2035. Over the past few years, despite circulation levels dwindling, there have been a number of new magazines launched to market.
The difference however is that these titles have been launched mostly by independent companies, rather than from the big publishing houses. Some of these launches are specialist and upmarket, illustrating what the artisan era could look like.
“Print is always going to be a really loved format for magazines and indeed actually I would also argue for newspapers,” McCabe says. “Newspapers will go weekly at some point, I think, but they will still be really loved. One of the critical aspects is that they will be expensive and the volumes will not make it possible to distribute through an elaborate and complex wholesale distribution service and deliver to 45,000 retailers on a sale or return basis.
“There’s a simple metaphor for this, and that metaphor is vinyl. Vinyl is actually quite important to the music industry and is a meaningful proportion of music sales. But no one pretends it is the only way to make money from music.”
Print vs Vinyl
The concept of print’s ‘resurgence’ being compared to vinyl is not a new one with Enders Analysis having reported on this ideology back in 2021 in its Transformation Pains of Consumer Magazines report.
During the ‘golden era of vinyl’ in the ‘60s and ‘70s, listening to vinyl records became a classic pastime with people bringing turntables and speaker systems into their homes. However, technology continued to advance with portability rising in the form of cassette tapes and Sony Walkman players. Despite this, vinyl still remained a stronghold for some with cassette tapes unable to offer the same sound quality as vinyl.
Described as the “final blow to vinyl” by audio systems retailer House of Marley, was the CD. Preferred for their portability, accurate sound, and storage capacity, the vinyl was unable to compete. As a result, sales for vinyl plummeted throughout the 1990s.
In 2006, sales began to creep back up again and by the end of 2020, vinyl sales had risen by 30% compared to 2019. Interestingly, with the growth of music streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music being so readily available on our mobile phones, the use of CDs and portable MP3 players have in turn taken a hit.
The shift in the way printed magazines are produced and consumed has been compared to the resurgence of vinyl records
Despite this, the sale of vinyl has continued to rise and this is due to the loyal fan base for the traditional format of listening to music. The same is now being said for printed magazines with the move to the ‘artisan era’ replicating this resurgence of demand from a dedicated fan base who prefer to take time out of the busy digital era to consume magazines in their traditional printed form.
So, what does this artisan era mean for magazine publishing on the whole, and what do publishers and printers need to keep in mind to remain successful as the playing field shifts?
“There’s a difference between what people say and what they do,” says McCabe. “People say they really trust magazines, but what they do is spend three hours on TikTok.
"One of the biggest reasons that magazines are declining in circulation is because more and more people are using YouTube or social media, which just uses up a lot of people’s time and it serves a similar purpose that magazines held or owned at one time. But if you look at the public’s perception and trust of magazines versus social media, magazines are so much more trusted.”
This notion of print being a more trusted medium than digital has been confirmed by research from Two Sides. A study found that consumers believe they gain a deeper understanding of the story when read from print media (65%) over online news sources (49%). The research also found that consumers trust stories read in printed newspapers (51%) more than stories found on social media (24%).
A Holistic Approach
However, despite this, digital is very much booming with many opting for social media and video formats to digest their news and entertainment quickly and on the go. Due to this, print is having to reassess its role in the market, and alongside a new artisan model of printed magazines, we are seeing many publishers combining digital with print formats in a holistic approach to delivering content.
Referring back to the new launches happening in recent years, McCabe says: “The circulation has not collapsed, it’s stayed quite high. And because they’ve been launched into this more artisan era, they’re ahead of the curve. They’re expecting to sell very low numbers in historic magazine terms but interestingly they are able to sustain those numbers on a long-term basis.
“They’re not suffering from the declines that the bigger magazines are suffering from because they’re building an audience that really trusts them. They’ve often got live events associated with their brand, they’ve often got good podcasts or some other engagement, and good newsletters or weekly emails that go out to their audience. It all feels a bit like a club or a membership service. Actually, print works really well as an anchor to that business model.”
For B2B magazine publishing, the use case differs slightly with trade magazines providing a ‘sit-back moment’ for industry members to catch up on the latest news from their industry and see what advertisers are promoting and launching.
Magazines are still used in many hotels and hospitality environments to provide a luxury and high-end feel
“Digitally it’s slightly different. Yes, the stories are there but what people want from online is ‘how does this digital service help me do my job?’ it’s not a lean-back moment, it’s a lean-in moment,” McCabe says.
“Print probably doesn’t provide that tool in the same way, but it’s incredibly valuable in giving you an overview of what’s going on in a sector because the layout works, the narrative of the magazine design, and so on, helps you understand everything that’s going on in a sector.”
And so it seems that this is the future of printed magazines – a premium, upmarket, artisan feel with smaller print runs and circulation, used alongside digital platforms such as online breaking news and video as a broader content offering.
Ironically, the trend appearing seems to be that the publications that will prevail are those who use the power of print, and the added value good quality paper and special effects such as foiling and embossing can provide to enhance the reader’s experience and offer something you can’t achieve online.
“What we’re describing is a return to a world where that print product is a really loved thing both by the people who produce it and by the people who consume it,” McCabe says. “It's not just the content, it is also the wrapper of the content, the physical product, and it’s that physicalness and how it feels, smells, looks, is so much a part of the experience. You can’t actually do that online.”
So rather than print having a resurgence in the literal form, it appears that print’s role is shifting and its benefits and unique selling points are being utilised by brands and publishers in a wider business strategy. This involves offering different forms of content to digital platforms and not just duplicating these articles in both formats.
People can access news for free online and want to do so quickly and efficiently. Those who sit down with a printed magazine are taking time out of their busy schedules and need the experience to reflect that.
McCabe says: “What’s happening in the digital world is AI (Artificial Intelligence) and the rise of the metaverse and all of that, and it’s all fascinating, but what print has to do is think about what it is doing in the opposite direction, which is creating amazing physical products and manifestations in the real world that people want to engage in and are beautiful, rather than digital.
Digital fatigue which occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic could be causing a shift back to printed products
“What’s great is that print has something unique that digital can’t do. One of the joys of print is that it can't interrupt you. I’m not going to get an alert, I’m not going to get a text, nothing is going to happen. It’s a moment of freedom and I think print media needs to celebrate that more proactively than it does actually.”
One example of using print alongside digital successfully to offer different experiences is Future Plc and its creation of the concept of a Bookazine. For this, the company takes content from its archive and turns it into a book in magazine form. This could be on cycling or photography for example, and the company sells enough meaningful quantities at £10 or £12 an issue and you have a really profitable business model in print.
Another example is the National Geographic’s annual 100 Most Beautiful Places issue. This issue is jam-packed full of beautiful imagery with only a small amount of text, and just wouldn’t work in the same way online with viewers expected to sift through 100 images on screen. Instead, the magazine offers something eye-catching and immersive to sit down and flick through at leisure.
Reflecting on the shift from the industrial era to the artisan era for printed magazines, Catherine Westwood, global print editorial strategy and operations director at Future Plc, comments: “Future magazines span a wide range of different production values and publishing frequencies to serve the needs of our very diverse magazine audiences.
“At one end of the scale are consumers who prefer a premium product that is unique to their interests and includes bespoke paper treatments and varied publishing schedules. At the other end of the spectrum, we create and publish thousands of copies of weekly titles with seamless efficiency for our loyal readers who wouldn’t dream of missing an issue. This essentially sums up one of Future’s USPs – we know our customers' passions and cater to them perfectly.”
When quizzed on Future’s own view of printed publications amongst its wider business strategy moving forwards, Zack Sullivan, chief revenue officer of Future Plc, says as the company focuses on driving forward for the digital age, magazines and subscriptions remain an important part of the business.
“Our high-intent, passionate audiences mean that our readers engage with and seek out the expert print content we create,” Sullivan explains. “Our print magazines work alongside our events, digital, and social channels to reach people in the way they want to consume media.
“We see that print continues to be a key element in an effective marketing mix. We know from the major advertising partnerships that run across Future, that when they include print, the campaign will more positively influence the entire brand funnel, from brand awareness to purchase intent.”
So it seems to be a positive outlook for the future of printed publications as titles shift to a more artisan product packed full of the possibilities of print itself, and it doesn’t appear to be a case of digital overtaking print, but that the two mediums are working in partnership to drive revenue and to offer content to consumers in any way they choose to digest it.
“To build community and membership models, you need as many consumer touch points as possible,” McCabe adds. “You want to create a hybrid model with lots of experiences that people can tap into and that add value to that community and ultimately to their personal experience in that community. That to me has print, digital, and live events written all over it.
“Print plays a role in that overall holistic picture about ‘what is this brand asset about, what does it mean to our audience, and why does the audience value it?’ It gives print a clearer purpose in the overall equation.”
Your text here...
