Overview of Magazine Industry

There are more than 8000 magazine titles published in the UK, which have been split into 7 different categories, these include consumer, which was sold in newsagents for the general public. Another category is business (Trading, professional or B2B) for people at work, and another includes academic journals, for university-level discussion, aimed at the students in the universities. Others in the category include:

-Customer magazines

-Newspaper supplements

-Staff magazines

-and part works.

Some of these magazines are used for entertainment or to inform people of news/stories. Typically the gossip magazines, like OK! or Heat. Also in the Radio Times. Some of these magazines sometimes aims at consumer specialist titles aimed at hobbies or interests.

Statistically, the biggest consumer is Bauer Publishing with a 25% sale revenue, and IPC Media with 20%. The BBC and National Magazine Company had just under 8% sale revenue. (Statistics from 2008)

In 1980, there were around 1400 titles, but today that has more than doubled, now with 3200 titles in the UK today, and 1.4 billion magazines are sold in a year, but not coming close to the 2.1 billion magazines sold in 1970. Advertisers spent £745 million in magazines in 2008 and consumers spent £2 billion on magazines annually. Statistics show that only 30% of the titles are popular for more than 4 years.

The most favored Women's magazines are:

-Glamour

-Cosmopolitan

-Yours

-Woman and Home

-Good Housekeeping

The more popular under 18s catagorys are:

-Moshi Monsters Magazine

-Fun to Learn (Friends edition)

-Fun to Learn (Peppa Pig edition)

-Cbeebies Art

-Top of the Pops

Top 4 Men's lifestyle magazines are:

-Men's Health

-Nuts

-FHM

-GQ