Why are magazines so expensive?

[HygerTyger]

Magazines have become ridiculously expensive in the last couple of years. It seems quite counterintuitive as they sell so much advertising and if the magazines were cheaper then more people would buy them and therefore might buy the advertised products.

I loved the days when buying a magazine was a cheap little treat every fortnight or so. And often Grazia, Glamour etc would be sold for £1 as a 'special price', those sorts of offers you never see any more. Grazia is almost £4 now!

While I'm here, I would also like to take a moment to mourn great now-defunct magazines: Real (not Real people), Glamour, Eve, She, Bmagazine, Company, Look, Newwoman, More... there were so many I loved and enjoyed.

Anyone still buy magazines? Any old magazines you still remember fondly?

Because so few people buy them any more. They can't charge the advertisers as much for ad space if they don't have a big audience, and they've lost loads of subscription revenue too.

People are just looking at low-quality content online instead, because it's free and easy to access.

If you like magazines, look for discounted subscriptions. I got both Red and Good Housekeeping for 6 months for about £10 and it was really easy to cancel and I didn't get hassled to renew.

Makes sense! It does feel as though the quality and Quantity of in print content is also declining sharply. Another casualty of most things being online I suppose.

Nothing compares to the enjoyment of actually holding a physical magazine in your hand

Agreed! I miss the well-designed, well-presented articles. Magazines are clinging on but I don't think they'll be around for long.

Paper costs have shot up in the past few years, all print media is suffering.

Magazines were dying back when I first started out as a baby editor in 2008 😂 the internet now provides both the sort of longform articles and trashy gossip and advice stuff that magazines once did.

This! I worked in editorial on magazines for a decade and every title I worked on has gone under, killed by dwindling sales figures. Lost advertising revenue, then we couldn’t fill the slots we had, so you slash the prices further and reduce the number of pages each issue; penny-pinching cost cuts like thinner, shitter paper, making the fashion assistants take rails of clothes on public transport to shoots, hubbing all the subs together instead of a subbing team per mag, ditching supplements and biannuals like ELLE Collections… it all felt like circling the drain. And at the same time, costs going up all round and talent leaving because salaries flatlined – freelance day rates the same for 25 years, but now no one gets freelancers in for holiday cover anymore, just stretch overstretched staff further. The internet killed it all and the audiences won’t come back; current generation is raised on the 24/7 internet content machine and their brains are trained on TikTok dopamine, not hours-long reading sessions.

Plus it’s harder to create original print content months in advance when everyone knows everything and can shop products, try trends, etc, immediately.

i subscribe to Readly - its 100's of magazines for something like £10 a month.

People just browse the Internet these days. Its only the elderly that buy magazines, give it 10 years and theyll be barely any left . Same with the newspapers. What parent is paying £6.99 for a kids one too. Less and less are being told

I buy Bella but in Dublin grazia is 6 euro. Red is over nine euro madness. So low sales here of them.

Read them for free via the library on the Borrowbox app.

There must be loads of unsold magazines, what a waste, what happens to them.

It’s such a shame. I loved a magazine back in the day and must have spent hundreds, if not thousands, over the years. Print media is superior to online in every way apart from speed of publication. It feels like a real treat to get one at the moment - love going to a proper newsagent or even a WH Smith and picking out a title I don’t usually read on the basis of an interesting cover, I always do that before a long solo train journey.

The only ones I read regularly are trade titles in the field I work in, and that’s because I get them for free.

I only buy Good Housekeeping Dec issue (Christmas ) I look forward to it and read it over and over .
It is ££
It is 50% adverts and the rest recycled articles .
So not vfm at all but I;d get the feeling of FOMO if I didn't buy it

Always loved magazines since reading my mum’s Hello!
Princess Diana! There was real glamour back then, too.

Fashion glossies, all of the women’s mags mentioned.
Celeb gossip, like New! Now! HEAT. Magazine & a cuppa.

When I was a kid, Smash Hits, Just Seventeen, Bliss.
As a teenager, NME, Melody Maker (papers) Select, Q.

So expensive now, I treat myself for holidays or Christmas.
And the writing just isn’t there anymore, or the editorial.

A lot of those great journos have left London, too, it seems.
I want a nice mix of A-Listers, slebs, fashion, lifestyle, food.

You have a good point OP
As PPs have said, there are subscriptions out there such as Readly that have many magazines for one monthly cost.

I remember when they were a weekly treat as well from Teen to Adult .

Blue Jeans
My Guy
Jackie
Look In Magazine
Disco 45 and others

Then came
Cosmopolitan
Company
OK
Glamour (I think it was, It was a small magazine as in compact)

Then older Still it was
Bella
Best
Take a Break
Chat
Thats - Life

Also specialist magazines are expensive now such as True Crime and Empire etc

The kids magazines prices are now ridiculous. £3.50ish for the Beano.

Anything with junk on the front is about £6 where the junk tends to be worse quality than Poundland and the magazine is poor quality and thin.

I may have mentioned it before but the loss of fashion magazines in print is leading to a real impoverishment of visual culture. More than half of MN absolutely panics if they’re shown a stylised fashion photograph, because they’re so used to the absolutely basic pouting, iPhone mirror shots that have taken the place of artistry. If people like Tim Walker of Sarah Moon were starting out now, they’d starve.

I've tried digital versions of magazines and it's not the same somehow, I don't enjoy them. I remember treating myself to the BIG glossies like Elle, Vogue and Cosmo as a teen/student for the samples of perfume and beautiful photos. They were two or three quid and it was great. They're nearly a tenner now!

Because nobody buys them anymore obviously. Same with newspapers.

I absolutely loved Real magazine!

I also used to love them as a treat to myself but now it's cheaper to buy a paperback than a couple of magazines and a lot of the magazines are so "samey" now.
I used to always buy Heat, Closer, New and Best during my weekly shop but have realised that I can't be bothered anymore although occasionally I might buy a copy of New or Closer.
When the paperback are only a few shelves along and the books literally £1-£2 dearer, I prefer to buy a book instead.

I subscribe to the Readly app £12.99 a month for online newspapers and magazines. Why would I want to buy them they are too expensive.

@HygerTyger Nothing compares to the enjoyment of actually holding a physical magazine in your hand.

You are spot on and that is why I persist in buying Red every month. Even though it costs about the same as a paperback book these days, it is one of my small self care pleasures in life.

This is why I don't buy them any more. Up until about 15 years ago,I used to buy 4 women's magazines a week,Bella,Best,Woman and Woman's Own. But they started getting more and more expensive,were full of adverts and started getting really 'sensationalist' with celebrity stories,which I hate. Nowadays,the only magazines I read are ones that come free with a newspaper. I could not believe it when a friend of mine a few months ago bought a music magazine,can't remember what it was called. £7! OMFG. And I swear it was 60% adverts.

I loved Jackie, and had an aunt who bought me the Jackie Annual every Christmas.Occasionally, I’ve seen the annuals in second hand bookshops, and when I look through them, the contents are very familiar to me, so I suppose I must have read them over and over again ( I’m 61).