Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Are there alternate ways of figuring gun magazine circulation?

Where one set of official figures differs significantly from another?

Several gun magazines belong to the Audit Bureau of Circulation which releases paid and unpaid circulation figures each six months. The figures are supplied to them by the Publishers subject to verification by the bureau.

Recent trends show downward trends among all magazines from 2001 until late 2003 or early 2004. At that time, some of the mass circulation magazines (like Reader's Digest) began to rebound. Then , at the end of 2004, Guns and Ammo showed an upward trend as did Guns Magazine. The Handgun magazines continued a significant decline.

One of the periodicals denies the accuracy of the ABC figures and claims a much higher monthly circulation than the most recent report would indicate. They also deny and decline in numbers. Does anybody know if magazine publishers have a different and more accurate way of measuring their circulation than is reflected by ABC reports?

"Where one set of official figures differs significantly from another?"

Another what? Another magazine or another set of figures.

Circulation could spike in between audits and settle back down when it comes audit time by virtue of cancellations or a reduction in single copy sales.

Audit numbers(read paid circ.) determine ad rates. And as I can tell, you understand ad rates determine profits. To further enhance profits, publishers pay attention to the return rates of their single copy sales to accurately determine press run(not to be confused with circulation) each month so they're not destroying 000's of unsold copies.

Paid circulation though is a moving target and I'm not sure magazine publishers care for accuracy or measurement (save to determine a trend) much beyond ABC audits...since they live and die by them.

I mean another set of figures for the same magazine. Like maybe, the magazine is estimating pass-along readership in their optimistic circulation figures or counting send-backs as part of their total circulation figures.

ABC reports an average circulation during a six month period. Maybe the editor is picking out the current month, the pre-sendback count or the best month recently. On their "buy advertising" page, they quote an ABC number from the mid 1990s. It is about the number of inhabitants of a small city greater than current reports.

There are facts and BS and that will never change.

The BS relating to circulation is based on "guestimates" including how many multiple readers will "share" a single copy.

There is only 2 facts involved.
1. How many copies printed
2. How many sold and that covers subscriptions and news stand copies.

The rest are returns from unsold copies on news stands or copies that are produced as "overs" which is a standard printing policy based on the variables within the printing process.

Commercial printing is not like a photo copier whereby you press a botton and get that quantity. Printing is a complex trade and in my humble opinion the most unknown profession on the planet.

I routinely ask people who claim to know it all if they would like to walk down the street with a pen and note pad and ask everyone they meet to draw a printing press and explain how it works. After 31 years in printing and publishing I have never had a single taker.

So again, the only real facts are the published quantity and the realized sales, all else is smoke and mirrors as you already knew.

I've read some hints from the Audit Bureau of Circulation that they may have tightened up on what they will accept as circulation figures. They do brag about being more careful about accepting the publishers reports and throw a wall-eyed fit when they find out somebody has stuffed the box. I wonder if some of the circulation declines in recent years might come from tighter auditing practices.
Right now they report Average Paid Circulation and Average Unpaid Circulation. The Unpaid Circulation is almost always zero.

I am not in the business, but I wonder how much more cut & dried it gets.... "We printed 100,000.00 copies, we sold 80,000.00 copies, took back 19,000 copies"(my quotes), giving the theft, torn, ruined, unsalable copies, what else is left?
The costs have to be fixed, don't they?

Pat

The reason it came up is that a near-dispute almost erupted on another board. A given magazine has shown a stead decline in circulation for the past several years if you belive the semi-annual reports they submit to ABC.
Current numbers are circa 103,000 per month.
The editorial department says the actual circulation is 121,000/ month. and that the circulation has never gone down.
The advertisers page on their website says 171,000/month.

It is within the interests of publishers to "over sell" the circulation figures in order to attract the advertising dollar. This is just the reality of business and I am not taking a shot at anyone.

Your assumption about fixed costs is spot on. A printer cannot supply a quote without knowing the exact quantity required because that is directly relevent to determining how much paper, ink, labor and press time is required.

Ther number of scans, copy and pages involved is usually quoted at a set price per page or a set price per page plus, the scans at so much each.

The printing process destroys a minimal quantity at each segment of production which is why "overs" are a standard item in the industry. Some customers stipulate the amount of unders or overs they will accept but that is only to cover their immediate commitments and ensure that the printer is responsibile to cover any short fall at his own expense with a reprint to make up that short fall if it exists. Usually, there is overs as this is a cheaper option that running short.

The publishers will have a print quantity that will be within 10% of the order quantity. These are sold and distributed as I indicated earlier.

very informative as were your comments on the "Gunwriter/Hero thread.
Thanks.

"Pass along" should not be construed as circulation but rather readership. Readership numbers quoted are a function of surveys, not ABC audits, and subject to some degree of hocus pocus. Anybody quoting circ. from a 1990's audit in 2005 has something to hide...either they're circ. has declined dramatically or they're no longer audited.

Their web page number is from 2001 and agrees with articles published at that time in various places ( agrees because the single source for all is the Audit Bureau). The 121,000 number comes from whatever criteria is used by the editorial department. The 103,000 number is from ABC audit of 12-2004. The number from six months before that was about 107,000.
The publication is still audited but now might be a good time to stop.

Look for an ownership statement to appear in the Oct. issue of this publication. That will cite circ. based on whatever method they're using to valiate their numbers.

Have always been skeptical of ANY of such numbers since I worked for one of the "Really Big Outdoor Magazines," beginning in the mid-1980's, and was told in the early 1990's that readership was over 12 million.

This was based on multiplying paid circulation by 5. Obviously (they said) since Our Magazine is in every barbershop and supermarket in the country (well-known hotbeds of Cheap Readers--those who read but don't buy), every issue is read by at least 5 people.

This was based on a "paid" circulation of around 2.5 million. This was based on selling yearly subscriptions for as low a $7.77, or even giving them away free with subscriptions to other magazines. Thus you could use the Really Big Outdoor Magazine for toilet paper at a lot cheaper price than buying toilet paper--but perhaps not as effectively.

Have also worked for magazines (as both writer and editor) that had paid circulations of 40,000 to 100,000, but advertisers were a lot happier since the readers actually read the magazines, instead of using them for other purposes.

In the long run have found that real readers (as opposed to ethereal readers) are a much more important number, both to publishers and advertisers.

The number of "real readers" is a harder amount to pin down, but advertisers who care usually find out which magazines attract the real readers. At least eventually.

MD

I can see how one of the barbershop biggies would have some real significant multiple readership. Whether they would be less responsive to advertising than a subscriber or a buyer-hard to say.