iPad Magazine Sales Are Dropping Off

Digital magazine sales have dropped off for all the magazines that make those figures available to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, according to a WWD Media report.

Vanity Fair sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from its average of about 10,500 for the August, September and October issues. Glamour sold 4,301 digital editions in September, but sales dropped 20 percent in October and then another 20 percent, to 2,775, in November. GQ’s November edition sold 11,000 times, which was its worst performance since April (when the iPad was released) and represents a slight decline from its average digital sales of 13,000 between May and October.

After Wired’s enormous debut month, the magazine averaged 31,000 digital sales between July and September, but even that fell in October and November, with sales coming in at 22,000 and 23,000, respectively. (For comparison, the magazine sold 130,000 total print editions for October and November.)

Men’s Health, which averaged digital sales of about 2,800 in the spring, sold 2,000 times in both September and October.

These drop-offs are somewhat expected as the novelty of reading an iPad magazine wears off. Hopefully, publishers will be able to stabilize their sales and work at building a solid customer base for their iPad magazines. Apple is thought to be working on a new "push" subscription feature for publishers; however, as usual, content providers are not seeing eye to eye with Apple.

Read More [via Rolf]