Overview of the Magazine Industry

Over view of the magazine industry In the UK there are over 800 magazines being published. They can be categorised into the following:
1. Consumer – sold in newsagents, supermarkets and online
2. Business / trade / professional / B2B - for people at work;
3. Customer magazines that organisations to give to their customers as a form of marketing;
4. Staff magazines to inform staff about their company
5. Newspaper supplements - come free as part of daily or Sunday paper;
6. Part works - a set number of issues builds up into an 'encyclopaedia' on a specific topic;
7. Academic journals - for university-level discussion of all sorts of arcane topics.


There are group of magazine publishers that dominate the market. ‘Bauer publishing’ creates 25% of the magazine revenue in the UK. ‘Time Warner’ is 20% of the revenue, and The BBC as 7.5% of the market. Today in the UK there are over 3,200 different consumer titles. 1.4 billion Magazines sold each year, and 85% of the population reads magazines. In the last ten year 500 magazines have launched annually, but 3 out of 4 survive after four years. In the last few years, as technology has developed, in order for magazine companies to continue to thrive, convergence has been adapted. Magazines now enable different platforms for their audience. You now can view a magazine online and through apps. This makes life easier for the consumer as they don’t have to go out and physically buy the magazine in a paper copy; they can simply download it from the internet.