The latest Audit Bureau of Circulations of South African (ABC) figures for Q4 2017 contain few surprises, with magazine numbers declining over Q3 and over the prior year.

According to the ABC's 'Report 90.0' presentation of Wednesday, 14 February, total magazine circulation in South Africa declined by 8.1% on the previous quarter, and by 16.6% over the prior year.

Consumer Magazines decreased by 5.8% on the previous quarter but increased by 1.4% over the prior year, while B2B magazines declined by 0.5% on the previous quarter, but increased by 2.7% over the prior year.

The Consumer Travel Magazine category saw an increase of 12.6% on Q3, but a decline of 3.3% over the prior year, while Custom Leisure magazines declined by 6.6% over Q3 and by 6.4% over the prior year.

Perhaps more telling of the state of magazine publishing in South Africa are the ABCs media title statistics, which saw seven new titles gained against the loss of 11 titles for the year.

In the digital arena, only 105 members (11.2%) submitted website traffic data and 46 members (4.9%) returned email newsletter data – this is out of a steadily declining membership of 930 for 2017.

So, do the ABCs stats reflect the true state of magazine publishing and circulation in South Africa? I think not.

Back in the early days of publishing my own travel trade magazine (2003 to 2011), I’d go through the process of submitting print and distribution stats to the ABC and undergo their annual audit process.

It was a reasonably simple process, seeing as we only printed and distributed around 3 500 copies regionally (within southern Africa and a few copies to the United Kingdom). And then my magazine went international and totally digital in 2012.

That’s when the ABCs audit system could not cater for digital page impressions. Since then, my digital magazine circulation has grown exponentially after being distributed via six international magazine platforms with a collective userbase exceeding 410 million.

And for readers who still crave the feel of glossy paper between their fingers when they flip pages, single or multiple copies can be purchased via indigo print-on-demand at a reasonable price through most of the distribution platforms.

Sure, it’s still an arduous task to gather circulation (open) stats from each of these distribution platforms, and they are crowded with thousands of media titles, but it’s a numbers game – one need only gain a fraction of user followers to see a massive improvement in circulation numbers.

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