Since 1962 American magazines have been obliged, by law, to carry a Statement of Management and Circulation. This applies to all magazines that carry advertising and appear four or more times a year. Publication of this data was also a requirement of the magazine being allowed a second-class mailing permit from the postal authorities, but it provided advertisers with an idea of the size of the potential readership and enabled the magazine to charge rates accordingly. As a consequence, the data appeared regularly although there are a few occasions, usually with the change of publisher, where it was either not published or where figures are repeated. All of the figures below are taken from the statements as printed in the individual magazines.

The data take two forms. The magazine is required to publish (1) the average paid circulation per issue over the preceding 12 months and (2) the circulation of the issue published prior to the time of filing. In both cases the data are broken down under several headings: (a) the total number of copies printed, (b) the number sold through newsstands and other dealers, (c) the number sold by subscription and (d) the number lost or wasted. In the following table I provide the yearly average sales figures, which is the total of (b) plus (c) above, and I show next to that the proportion of sales as a percentage of the print run (known as the ‘sell through’), and the percentage of total sales sold via newsstands, etc. (figure b). A general rule of thumb is that if the sell through is above 40% then the magazine is likely to be in profit, or reasonably healthy. The ‘sell through’ figure at the bottom of each column is the average for the 11 years listed, not the percentage change through the period.

The report is usually filed on 1 October, but sales figures can take up to three or four months to filter through. Consequently the yearly average is not a straight calendar year but is probably summer to summer. The years are thus shown as combined years.

These figures are only available for US magazines.