The Mail on Sunday has said there are positive lessons to draw from its newsstand experiment with You magazine, which it is withdrawing from sale after the 15 August edition.
You, which launched as a paidfor title in March this year, will revert to being a weekly supplement in the Sunday paper with a renewed emphasis on its sister website, ending weeks of speculation about its future.
A spokesman for The Mail on Sunday said that despite only reaching a circulation of around 20,000, You was not a failed experiment and that all publishers could draw from the experience.
He said: "There's a positive lesson — that there are always new readers out there. We got 20,000 readers to pay £1 for You, a magazine with a modest amount of TV advertising that was a gateway into the newspaper.
"Given the current climate, we achieved a reasonable performance, but ended with a newsstand circulation figure that we didn't want to support financially.
"We would rather put the money that was spent on the newsstand edition into the website."
The spokesman defended its low circulation, saying that the newsstand title was only available in the London area and, he claimed, it had boosted sales of the MoS.
The newsstand version of You was aimed at getting the magazine into the hands of younger women who did not normally buy the Sunday newspaper.
Edited by Sue Peart, with a cover price of £1, You struggled to reach its initial sales target of 50,000.
The title is believed to have sold just short of 40,000 copies in its first week and been on a decline since then — as low as 15,000 in the last few weeks, according to one industry source.
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