Average sales of the Sunday Mirror are up 66.7% year on year, while the People – another title published by Trinity Mirror – is up 61.6%

Meanwhile the Mail on Sunday has dropped 6.1% on the previous month, showing that perhaps Associated aren’t as well placed to pick up former NotW readers as many thought.

On the dailies market the FT was the only one to see an increase of circulation as the fall in newspaper sales overall continues.

September daily newspaper sales

September Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.}

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If this trend were to continue it would be worth an additional £45m in revenue for the publisher.

The Sunday market on the whole is still down however on its position back in June with a hole of 560,000 Sunday newspapers, worth just over £120,000 in margins across the country.

Retailers and publishers alike continue to wait for any announcement from News International regarding a Sunday tabloid, but until then it’s Trinity Mirror who are the big winners.

August daily newspaper sales

July Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.}

July Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.}

In June, ‘i’ closed the gap on its sister title as it posted the highest month-on-month rise of any daily or Sunday national.

According to the latest ABC figures, published last Friday, the 20p newspaper increased its circulation by 3.8% in June, reporting total sales that are less than 4,000 copies behind The Independent and selling more than 86,000 copies a day more on the newsstand.

Meanwhile, The Independent lost 26.4% of its sales compared to the previous year, recording the biggest decline of any daily title.

Elsewhere in the ABCs, not one newspaper succeeded in increasing its year-on-year sales figures, but the Mail on Sunday, which launched its Mail Rewards scheme last month to encourage customer loyalty to the newspaper and the Daily Mail, had the best performance. It kept its yearly loss to just 0.9% while the Daily Mail also recorded the smallest fall in the daily market.

June daily newspaper sales

June Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.} ]]> http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/07/retailer-resources/newspaper-stats/2011/junes-abcs/latest-abcs-show-growth-for-i/feed/ 0 http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/06/retailer-resources/newspaper-stats/2011/mays-abcs/giggs-plays-away-and-nets-the-scots-more-sales/ http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/06/retailer-resources/newspaper-stats/2011/mays-abcs/giggs-plays-away-and-nets-the-scots-more-sales/#comments Sat, 18 Jun 2011 07:00:27 +0000 Louise Banham http://www.betterretailing.com/?p=7008 Scandal sells – and that was certainly the case for the Sunday Herald last month as its circulation was boosted 9.2% compared to the previous month. The Scottish newspaper reaped the reward of being the first national title to name Ryan Giggs as the footballer who took out a superinjunction to prevent his affair from becoming public.

According to the latest ABC figures for May, the newspaper achieved the highest monthly circulation increase of all titles in both the daily and Sunday market.

It published a full-page picture of the Manchester United player, who had taken a gagging order out in England, after taking legal advice that the order did not apply in Scotland.

However, the footballer’s antics failed to match up to the sales boost experienced by nearly all national newspapers in May 2010 when the General Election took place, so every title – in both the daily and Sunday markets – lost sales year on year.

May daily newspaper sales

May Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.} ]]> http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/06/retailer-resources/newspaper-stats/2011/mays-abcs/giggs-plays-away-and-nets-the-scots-more-sales/feed/ 0 http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/05/retailer-resources/newspaper-stats/2011/aprils-abcs/the-royal-effect/ http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/05/retailer-resources/newspaper-stats/2011/aprils-abcs/the-royal-effect/#comments Mon, 23 May 2011 12:47:09 +0000 Louise Banham http://www.betterretailing.com/?p=6489 When Prince William and Kate Middleton announced their engagement last year, it was immediately obvious that their wedding day would create an excellent opportunity for independent retailers to capitalise on.

In the months leading up to 29 April, Royal wedding-related products entered the market in their droves – and the general public snapped them up.

One area the wedding has clearly had an impact on is the newstrade. People anxious to find out as much as they could about the wedding in the days immediately following it, helped mid-market titles the Sunday Express, Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail achieve significant month-on-month circulation increases of 13%, 3.6% and 3.3% respectively.

Meanwhile, the magazine market has benefited even more. One London retailer told me he’d sold 150 copies of Hello!’s special issue on 1 May in just half an hour. Other retailers throughout the country may not have experienced demand on the same scale, but it’s likely they sold far more copies of Hello! and other Royal wedding specials than usual.

And the increased magazine sales are set to continue, with more one-shots and specials still to come. It looks like Royal wedding fever isn’t over yet.

April daily newspaper sales

April Sunday newspaper sales

_{* Core sales are newstrade sales and pre-paid subscriptions in the UK & Ireland.
** ERM is the total income to retailers for one day’s sales, calculated using margin statistics.
*** Total sales includes foreign and bulk sales.} ]]> http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/05/retailer-resources/newspaper-stats/2011/aprils-abcs/the-royal-effect/feed/ 0 http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/05/products-and-services/news-and-magazines/bank-holiday-justice-newspaper-allocations/ http://www.betterretailing.com/2011/05/products-and-services/news-and-magazines/bank-holiday-justice-newspaper-allocations/#comments Mon, 16 May 2011 07:30:43 +0000 Louise Banham http://www.betterretailing.com/?p=6412

Just over five months ago, Retail Newsagent received a deluge of letters from readers who were hugely disappointed with the service they received from their wholesaler regarding their newspaper supplies.

Reduced supplies from publishers and wholesaler-made changes to retailers’ orders for the bank holidays over Christmas and the New Year, left many without enough copies to satisfy their customers.

Independents’ outrage prompted a campaign by RN to fight for better allocation to retailers during all bank holiday periods.

Wholesalers and publishers pledged support for the campaign, and published information and amendment-to-order deadlines in a bid to ensure newspaper supplies were more accurate for both the Easter weekend and the Royal wedding weekend.

With the majority of retailers who placed their bank holiday orders with their wholesaler by the set date, reporting that they received the supplies they required, the exercise has been hailed a success.

Of course these were only two of the bank holidays weekends for the year, so wholesalers still have a lot of work to do to prove the problem is truly being rectified. However, Smiths News has already sent out a letter to its customers informing them of the timings and deadlines for advising newspaper supply requirements for the forthcoming Whitsun bank holiday at the end of the month.

It’s fair to say the issue of allocation is ongoing, but the steps that have been made since the beginning of the year at least acknowledge the problem and possibly represent a change in attitude towards the independent sector.

We look forward to hearing from you in June to find out whether you received the correct number of newspapers for your store.

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The matter of receiving the correct newspaper supplies on bank holidays has been an ongoing problem for independent retailers for years, but a campaign kicked off by Retail Newsagent at the start of the year, addressing the issue, has already made progress.

Wholesalers and publishers have promised to review newspaper allocations and distribution arrangements for the forthcoming bank holidays. The Press Distribution Forum – a self-regulatory body set up for the industry last year – said the review of the system was in response to retailer feedback. A panel of proactive retailers, set up by the RN Bank Holiday Justice campaign, will follow wholesaler guidelines, monitor their supplies and report back on their wholesaler’s performance. It will, hopefully, remedy over and under-allocation problems for the stores taking part.

We’ll have to wait until the end of April to find out just how successful the trial is has been, but the fact that wholesalers and publishers have sat up and taken notice of at least one of the constant challenges the independent sector faces is encouraging and could result in a significant improvement to the service retailers receive.

The Monday-to-Friday title is now selling 167,944 copies on the newsstand, which its circulation manager John Simmonds says has been helped greatly by independent retailers, many of whom have given the title prominent positioning and carried out point-of-sale activity.

As well as independent support, the newspaper has invested in a huge television campaign and vastly increased its distribution to include Ireland and all areas of Scotland.

However, retailers will be wondering whether ‘i’ is stealing sales from The Independent, which lost 12.9% of its sales year on year to sell 85,244 copies a day. Or perhaps, given that The Independent has been shedding sales for a couple of years, perhaps this further decline was inevitable, whether a new title entered the market or not.

One thing that’s certain is that while many retailers are happy to support the newspaper, they’re not best pleased with its cash margin of 5p per copy.

Should ‘i’ continue to be successful and keep adding on circulation, the ideal solution would be for the publisher to gradually increase the title’s price to bring it in line with tabloids and mid-market titles such as the Daily Mirror and Mail.

Maybe then, it would provide independent retailers with a really big incentive to stock it and keep supporting it.

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Despite asking the shop assistant whether they stock the magazine on several occasions, she was always told that the shop didn’t have the space to hold any more children’s titles than it currently does. As a result, she now stops off in a nearby Waitrose or Sainsbury’s to buy the magazine.

It’s understandable that space is tight for any independent shop, but I was amazed the retailer hadn’t jumped on the opportunity to shop save the magazine for her. Just by offering to order the magazine in for her, the retailer could have made £1.99 every fortnight – not to mention the additional purchases she may make on every trip to collect it.

With the PPA ploughing a lot of money into promoting its Just Ask shop save and home news delivery campaign over the past two years, ensuring your shop displays this point-of-sale material and making sure you and your staff always offer to order a title in, could really improve your sales and prevent customers from deserting you for a multiple.

I went to the central London-based shop on the eve of its launch to find out how it compares to independent retailers’ stores. As you’ll see from this picture, it’s rather unique and, for the typical reader of Condé Nast titles, hugely inviting.

The fairly small area is very brightly lit, with interactive screens placed sporadically among the magazine display, and iPads to encourage customers to sample the digital side of the publisher’s business. And every magazine gets a full, double or multiple facing.

Jonathan Newhouse, chairman of Condé Nast, who said he started his career in a newsagent and was the brains behind the project, told me it was “how a newsstand should look”. Of course, an independent retailer wouldn’t be able to emulate it in their store – and it’s doubtful it would work anyway – but retailers can take something away from it. Having titles fully or double faced may not always be practical, but for the biggest-selling titles, it really does succeed in drawing customers to the newsstand.