Some of them are the size of telephone directories; in many cases, they weigh much more.
Despite all the worries about a lack of advertising, this year’s autumn fashion issues of the big American women’s magazines are thicker and fatter than ever.
One intrepid reporter for Folio magazine visited her local newsstand and picked up as many of the just-out fashion mags as she could carry, took them back to the office and weighed them.
The total came to just over 23 pounds. Total number of pages: 4,600.
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Top of the scale: Vogue magazine which weighed in at just under five pounds. Its pages totaled 840, of which 727 were advertising. W Magazine came in second at 3.6 pounds and 640 pages, 477 of them ad pages. Third place: Elle (2.75 pounts, 592 pages, 388 of them ads)
Others ranged: In Style (618 pages) Harper’s Bazaar (574 pages) Glamour (418) and Lucky (372). Even Allure, smallest on the list, ran to 264 pages.
Getting down to the reading material is a big task too. In Vogue there were 293 ad pages before one reached the editor’s page, and in W Magazine, 276 pages.
Total circulation of the top nine came to just under 11 million.
Despite all those glossy ad pages, some magazines are still weighing putting up their newsstand prices.
Bauer, which largely built its business on low cover prices, is planning to raise the price on at least 11 of its titles. In Touch and Life & Style, each of which sell 2 million copies on newsstands, will go up from $1.99 to $2.99.
There will also be jumps in price at First for Women and Women’s World Teen titles are also going up. The increases will take effect in October or early November.
The increases are the result of pressure from wholesalers who have for a while been trying to persuade Bauer and other low cost publishers to raise their cover prices, MediaWeek reports. The wholesalers claim they lose money on magazines priced at under $2.49.
Although some publishers claim this isn’t so, some have agreed to increase their discounts.
What effect the new prices will have on sales no-one is prepared to predict. Lately some other titles have gone up without too much effect on sales, especially celebrity titles. OK went up a dollar to $2.99 earlier this year, while People is going up 50 cents to $3.99 this month
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