The sun’s out, so it’s spring cleaning time at Bauer with a two-for-one offer on magazine closures.
Last week they decided that Pregnancy and Birth was not the little bundle of joy that the accountants wanted (it was barely managing to sell 12,000 copies an issue), and now More! is less.
More!‘s fall is quite joyously spectacular. Its ABC for July-December 2010 was 188,000; for the same period last year it barely managed 92,000, a drop of more than half. Such a decline either suggests readers deserting in droves, or the switching off of a huge level of support and black hat circulation techniques. In the same period Grazia has lost 40,000 sales (17%) and Heat an impressive 110,000 (30%), none of which is going to endear Paul to the Germans.
Rumours are circulating that one, possibly two, other magazines in the Bauer portfolio may have announcements of their own in the coming weeks.
