Bauer Publishing Group confirmed last week it will raise the newsstand prices of seven of its magazines in late October/early November.
Celebrity weeklies In Touch Weekly and Life & Style will hike their prices from $1.99 to $2.99. The two gossip glossies currently sell more than 2 million newsstand copies a week û most from the larger In Touch. First for Women will go up fifty cents to $2.49, and another women’s title, Women’s World, will see a thirty cent increase to $1.79.
Teen titles J-14 and M will be the most expensive at $3.99 û a dollar increase. They are joined by Soaps in Depth, which will go from $3.50 to $3.99.
The purported reason behind the price hike is wholesaler pressure. Bauer pays its wholesaler The News Group an incentive to stock its titles, but the low costs on its magazines have reportedly been cutting into wholesaler earnings potential.
Bauer depends largely on newsstand sales, rather than subscriptions, to move its titles. Celebrity title In Touch saw its total circulation rise 10.2 percent, according to the ABC’s Fas-Fax first-half 2007 report. Much of this increase came from a 10.6 percent jump in single-copy sales. Life & Style also had a 10.6 percent jump in newsstand sales, giving its total circulation a 6.8 percent bump.
Around 90 percent of Bauer’s yearly revenue has come from single-copy sales in the past.
Bauer, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, publishes 120 magazines worldwide. In the United States, the company publishes nine low-price titles in the teen, women’s and entertainment categories.
