Hey—I didn’t know that!

From Wikipedia (via Jay Livingston):

Newsweek sells only about 40,000 newsstand copies compared with 1.5 million subscriptions. (Both figures are substantially lower than they were a decade ago.) The figures for Time are about double those of Newsweek, but the ratio of newsstand sales to subscriptions is about the same.

I guess I’m not surprised that most of the sales are from subscriptions, but I’m surprised the fraction is so close to 100%.

4 thoughts on “Hey—I didn’t know that!

  1. Probably another example of an error from a heuristic; I know, Andrew, that you’re a NYC dweller (as am I). I would guess that we have a lot more news-stands per capita than other cities (much less suburbia or rural areas) simply because we walk more than people in other cities, at least in the USA.

  2. When I read the print economist religiously, I became a subscriber because the cost was so much lower. Less than half. It only makes sense to buy the magazine at a bookstore if it is an occasional impulse buy.

  3. It has come to this: The local PBS station (WBEZ Chicago) offered as a choice of premium for a certain level — your choice of a free Newsweek subscription or a WBEZ refrigerator magnet. The fact that this comparison can be made doesn’t say much about the perceived value of a newsmagazine.

  4. A subscription to newsweek is amazingly cheap. Something like $10 for the year if you buy it when they are offering discount. That is the price of purchasing 3 copies at the news stand.

    I wonder what the difference is in subscription versus news stand purchases for a magazine like People. I would venture that the results would probably be polar opposites.

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