Magazines look to raise cover price as print ad dwindles
As magazines continue to struggle to monetize with dropping ad revenue and a shift from print to digital, some magazines are looking to increase the price. And it is no wonder, since supscription prices have gotten so competitive, that according to an article in the NY Times today, in the last 6 months of 2008, subscribers paid on average only "47 cents an issue for Newsweek, 77 cents an issue for BusinessWeek and 89 cents an issue for Fortune."If you think about the time and effort it takes to get a news story to a reader --from the reporting, the writing, the editing, the layout, the copy edit, the the printing cost, the mailing cost, etc.-- it is no wonder that as advertisers continue to cut their print ad spend, that magazine publishers are i the value of the product that they are selling and looking to simply raise the cover price. The Economist magazine does not do any discounting, and their circulation is up. Sometimes consumers are willing to pay, especially if the product is a value.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/13/business/media/13circ.html?_r=1
