industry hit hard by recession:

While some publishers are swapping the print edition and going web-only, expanding their companion websites, others are cutting back on digital initiatives.

In 2008, across the magazine industry there was decline in single copy rack sales (down 1% overall), circulation figures (down 11%), and correspondingly, ad spend online and off (down 11%). And although we can usually count on the notion that s-x sells, even the adult entertainment industry publications are suffering as Hugh Hef’s famous glossy posted yearly revenues down 11% last year. The largest dips were at gossip and celebrity magazines and tabloids such as National Enquirer, US Weekly, OK! Weekly, In Touch, Life and Style, and Star Magazine, as consumers controlled our impulse buys at the checkout.

The exception: gossip mag Hello! Canada saw a 50% increase in single copy sales in the last half of 2008 over the same period in 2007. According to The Financial Post, this success story is linked to the title’s focus on British and European celebs, which according to Tracey McKinley, the magazine’s executive publisher, are more “relevant” to Canadian readers. Call it commonwealth nostalgia? This week the Canadian government announced the creation of a 75.5 MILLION dollar fund to keep the national periodical industry alive.

Overall in 2008, single-copy sales of Canadian consumer magazines fell 24%, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Total paid circulation, which includes subscriptions, fell almost 5%. In the US, 525 magazines were shut down in 2008–just over one per day (according to a report by MediaFinder).

With figures like this, optimism seems forced, but Mark Jamieson, CEO of Magazines Canada remains upbeat. “Although we are in a period of big change,” Jamieson admits (in a recent news release) “readership, including online, is as solid as it ever was, and magazine companies are well positioned for the long term.”

For some titles or publishers, that might mean swapping the print edition and going web-only, or expanding their companion websites. Or on the other hand, cutting back on digital initiatives,  consolidating, canceling, and restructuring online offerings, such as they are doing at Conde Nast, where digital revenue in 2008 accounted for only 3% overall.

However eMagazines president Andrew Degenholtz suggests that “digital doesn’t replace a magazine that someone will grab at the checkout counter, but is a different customer motivation and has other promises.”

On that note David Pauly at Bloomberg.com confesses that although he is worried that Amazon’s Kindle will make hardcopy magazine, book, and newspaper publishing obsolete, personally he doesn’t like reading on a handheld device or any computer screen. Pauly continues nostalgically: “There’s something about holding a book on your lap or folding the newspaper in fourths like a commuter.”

Though not a panacea, at least digital magazine sales on the Kindle produce revenue for an industry struggling with consumers’ expectations that online content should be free.