Thankfully, spring is on its way. We love spring for even more reasons than most, and not just because it lightens up Newsstand Hovels...
No, spring means sunshine and sunshine means no one will be able to read those troublesome digital magazines in the garden. Add that to the obvious perils of reading your tablet in the bath - and the good old print magazine is starting to regain the edge in various parts of the home.
There was an excellent article in The Observer the other day, detailing how print magazines that don’t invest heavily in digital editions are those leading the industry sales increases. This is common sense to us but is a point often lost in the constant clamour of those who insist that print is on its way out. Unfortunately many of the magazine publishers are contributing to this noise (and, as a result, contributing to falling sales). All we can do at Newsstand is keep ensuring we make as many print magazines as possible available to everyone.
There has been the usual highlighting of dropping sales over the last quarter amongst the popular titles (who are often spending obscene amounts of money on developing Android and other digital platform editions), but many magazines who take pride in their print editions are showing tremendous growth. These magazines do not grab the headlines as they are not the big sellers – but they often lead the industry in the more important areas of design and content quality. On this point, we've joined something called Pinterest, just to collate together all the best magazine cover designs we come across - please drop by, I think we are here.
At Newsstand we know the younger generations still enjoy, even prefer, the print magazine. We just hope that the print doom mongers don’t instigate a self-fulfilling prophecy, where publishers feel they must invest in digital, give away print and end up finding it impossible to survive.
So please, keep browsing the smaller titles, get hold of something different and enjoy the sunshine in the garden. Let the others be distracted by the spot on the end of their nose – it won’t be long now.
