The Alliance of Audited Media has just released a report that shines light on the current state of affairs with digital magazines. The organization tracked data from the last six months of 2012 and the statistics blow away levels established in 2011.
In 2011, digital magazine sales accounted for 3.2 million issues sold, whereas the last six months of 2012 saw 7.9 million. This is a huge difference and is indicative to a large number of customers gravitating towards tablets and e-readers.
The most successful paid digital magazines was led by Game Informer Magazine, which is published by GameStop. Maxim had 259,000 active subscriptions and Cosmo followed close behind with 254,000. The competition dropped significantly with National Geographic 160,077 and Poder Hispanic, which moved 149,000 copies, rounding off the top five.
Although digital sales are seeing record levels of success, the industry actually decreased, as a whole. Total paid and verified circulation for the 402 U.S. titles reporting year-over-year comparable data decreased 0.3 percent. Paid subscriptions were up 0.7 percent, and single-copy sales decreased 8.2 percent.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
