The Magazine Industry

 The Magazine Industry;
In Britain there are more than 8000 titles published in the magazine industry. Each one of these titles is categorised. These categories are to separate the different types of magazine, where you’d find, their target audience and what they contain. There are seven main categories. Consumer is the main category and the most popular. There are over 3,200 consumer titles. These consumer magazines can be general or specialist and can be found in most news agents and online. General titles aim is to entertain and inform whereas specialist are directed more towards a certain activity or hobby. The business magazines are meant for people at work. This is similar to how customer and staff magazines are directed particularly at certain audiences. Customer magazines are given to customers by organizations as a form of marketing. Staff magazines are used in companies to help aid and teach their staff.

Newspaper supplements is another categories, these are the magazines you get free in a newspaper. An example would be a TV listings magazine.

Part works magazines that readers collect to gather a certain knowledge base on a topic. These normally have a set amount of issues. They often have a certain theme and come with a set of objects or free gifts for the readers to collect.

Academic journals are aimed at a target audience of university students. These magazines will be the kind to discuss complex topics that only the university students would understand.

The biggest consumer magazine publishers in the UK are Bauer, Time Inc, BBC and Hearst. These are responsible for the publishing of a vast majority of the consumer magazines. Bauer and Time Inc are the big two both making up 20-25% of the market. Consumer magazines are said to sell £2 million each year.

In average 1.4 Billion magazines are sold every year. This is lower than what it was in 1970, but has increased by 2 million since 1992. 85% of the population now read magazines.

Advertisers also use magazines to reach out to audiences. They usually spend £745 million on magazines in order to do this.

In the past decade around 500 new magazines titles have been launched, however it is said that only around 3 in 10 actually last for more than 4 years.