Two B2B newsbrands covering the largely non-digital worlds of books and theatre are shifting resources away from their long-running print editions.
The Stage Media Company managing director Hugh Comerford told Press Gazette revenue from both digital subscriptions and advertising have been growing and the business now aims to grow its events offering.
“I would say revenues are pretty much as good as they were, but of course at a time when costs are rising a bit faster that’s tending to squeeze margins a bit,” Comerford said.
A weekly newspaper covering the theatre and performing arts industry in the UK, The Stage was founded in 1880 by Maurice Comerford, Hugh’s great-grandfather, and continues to be owned by the Comerford family.
The Bookseller is a weekly magazine covering the book publishing industry. Founded in 1858, it was an independent title for the ten years prior to its acquisition by The Stage Media Company in August 2020. Before that it was owned by Nielsen and, until 1999, the Whitaker family.
Comerford told Press Gazette that as part of an integration programme begun last year the company merged the sub-editing desks at the two titles and combined the previously separate sales and marketing departments into one.
“What that’s really focusing on is being more of a digital business and really recognising that reader revenues are an important part of the future,” Comerford said.
“Most publishers, particularly B2B, are probably working harder to hang on to the advertising they’ve got. And so that’s the approach we’re taking there.”
The company has been “cutting costs on the print side, particularly on production”, resulting in smaller editions.
Both titles have registration and paywalls to bring in digital subscribers, which Comerford said has “worked well for us”.
The Bookseller claims 29,000 daily subscribers to its morning briefing email and a social media following which includes 253,000 followers on X/Twitter and 49,000 followers on Linkedin. The Stage says 85,000 users are signed up to its twice-weekly newsletter. Neither title publishes print circulation figures.
Although both are primarily aimed at a professional B2B audience, Comerford said The Stage sees some consumer traffic for its theatre reviews. Monthly digital subscriptions for The Stage and The Bookseller are £5.99 and £16 respectively.
‘More evolution than revolution’ after Covid delays
Although the desk integrations did not themselves result in redundancies, the company did make at least one role redundant last month and another in August.
In August The Bookseller reported that Emma Lowe, who was both director of publisher relations at The Bookseller and director of business relations at The Stage, had been made redundant. She was followed last month by Benedicte Page, a deputy editor who had been with The Bookseller since 1999.
Headcount now stands at approximately 56, Comerford said, which he added was “broadly” the same as before.
He said the company had “taken advantage of a couple of staff who have left us – more on the news, but [also] senior editorial side, and we haven’t replaced those.
“I probably wouldn’t call them redundancies, but we have certainly seen a slight reduction there where a couple of people left and haven’t been replaced.
“So I suppose there’s a rolling programme of changes that we probably would have done a bit sooner but for things like Covid delaying everything… It’s probably more evolution than revolution.”
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