The magazine segment represents a major chunk of the global print publishing market. With more than 100,000 magazine titles being published in the US and UK alone, the magazine publishing industry is huge in scale and operations. Each year, the US and UK markets sell upwards of 4 billion magazine copies. However, the industry is not without its share of problems. It faces a challenging operating environment, with changing consumption patterns and rising costs, intensified by recessionary influences.
The magazine market, like the newspaper market, is driven by a consumption cycle that is primarily determined by consumer and corporate spending. Consumer spending refers to subscriptions and reader base, and corporate spending refers to advertising. Data compiled by the American Publishers Information Bureau in April 2009 reports a 20.2% decline in ad spending compared to the previous year - the worst hit have been magazines in the automobile, finance, insurance and real estate categories. The rise of Web advertising has also added to publisher woes. Magazine publishers are now being forced to re-define their business models to address consumers’ changing preferences, rising costs, decreasing revenues and shrinking markets.
The ValueNotes report, titled "Magazines: the new frontier for outsourcing"
