Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Sales of The Spectator: 2016 H2

  • UK print sales up 10pc in a year – fastest of any UK magazine or newspaper
  • UK newsstand sales up 13pc.
  • Growing popularity of digital/print bundle

Last year, we revealed that The Spectator had broken its previous circulation record and was selling more copies than at any time in its 189-year history. That momentum has kept building and the figures we release today are nothing short of extraordinary: print subscriptions are up 9pc year-on-year. Print circulation is now rising at the fastest rate since 1989. To have sales at a record high is one thing: to have print circulation growing at the fastest rate for almost 30 years is quite another. There are several measures of magazine circulation: print, digital, overseas etc. But let’s look at what is, perhaps, the most straightforward comparison: UK sales. Our 2016 rise is the fastest of any publication, magazine or newspaper.

So what’s going on? Aside from the ever-more-potent magic of The Spectator, I’d put it down to three things.

1) The comeback of print. We are investing more in the artwork and cartoons; and the joys that can only really come from flicking through a magazine that you hold in your hand. For our advertisers, in particular, a slot in one of the best-designed publications in the land means reaching more paying customers than ever before. Even newsstand sales, supposedly the most imperilled part of the magazine industry, rose 13pc last year.

2) A new flight to quality. There’s no end of copy that you can read for free. But if you want writers of the calibre found in The Spectator – Charles Moore, Rod Liddle, Hugo Rifkind, James Forsyth – then nowadays you need to pay for them. And in the era of fake news, where you get your analysis from has never been more important.

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