The pandemic delivered an uppercut, but not a knockout punch, to the print magazine industry. Still, a number of titles vanished from newsstand racks in the wake of COVID-19; either folding outright or migrating to online only, according to retail sellers. And readership? It’s likewise been trimmed, partly by the departure of Millennials and Generation Z to online platforms for news and entertainment, leaving loyal older readers to prop the market. “There is still demand for magazines,” says Andrew Devrell, operations manager at Books on the Square on Angell Street in PVD. “People come in here all the time, looking for a particular magazine, like Architectural Digest or The New Yorker.”
But they won’t be found at this independent bookstore. “We stopped selling magazines 10 years ago because the vendor ignored the list we’d submitted, and kept sending us stuff they thought our customers would want, and those magazines just didn’t sell,” says Jennifer Kandarian, store manager. “So when someone comes in and asks for a magazine, we send them to Newsbreak across the river in Swansea,” Kandarian adds.
Jim Stanton opened his magazine super store in the MA town almost 40 years ago. Located about 12 miles from the RI border, it carries more than 5,000 periodicals, which are displayed in 60 racks. It stocks bestsellers, mass market paperbacks, and trading cards. He says such regional publications as Boston Magazine, New York Magazine, and Rhode Island Monthly are steady sellers. No surprise, RI Monthly, which is displayed in its own 3-tiered stand at Barnes & Noble on Bald Hill Road in Warwick, “goes fast,” says one of the bookstore’s staffers. Vogue, Rolling Stone, and The Atlantic see good demand, while sales are “very sporadic” for the other titles, she adds. Magazines such as Consumer Reports and Computerworld, along with weeklies like Entertainment and Information, have gone digital and are available only via an online subscription, retailers point out.
Some print magazines have taken a page from that and are now subscription only. That means they produce just enough issues to mail to their subscribers, and have stopped printing the extra copies once destined for newsstands, bookstores, and supermarkets. “When a print magazine goes subscription only, we’ll do a bulk subscription to maintain our big selection,” Newsbreak’s Stanton says. Popular categories are food, arts and crafts, fashion, music, and sports. “There are about 80 food magazines, believe it or not, even though there are like a million recipes online,” Stanton chuckles. Other genres are just hanging in there, such as transportation and history. Before the pandemic, there were around 85 magazines on cars and trucks, and trains and planes. Afterward, about 70 of them were discontinued, according to Stanton. History magazines likewise took a hit. For instance, HistoryNet ceased operations in the summer of 2023 and its Wild West, Civil War Times, American History, and Military History, among a few other publications, went into the dustbin of history. “For a lot of magazines after COVID, sales were down and they had a really big staff. They were going issue to issue, like people living paycheck to paycheck,” Stanton observes. “They couldn’t sustain that.” Still, the Newsbreak owner remains optimistic about print. A case in point is fantasy football magazines. People who play in the online fantasy leagues want print versions at their elbows for ready reference on statistics and predictions. The same holds true for fantasy baseball league players. So those print copies tend to zip off the racks. Other game magazines, such as crossword puzzles and Sudoku, are popular among teenagers, according to retailers.
Another good sign for magazines can be seen in the bright and airy Periodical Room of the Warwick Public Library on Sandy Lane. “We’re adding new titles to get more variety in that room for our patrons,” says Jen Linton, the library’s Coordinator of Adult Services. “The comfy chairs in the room are always occupied.” Meanwhile, special issues on pop superstar Taylor Swift, published by Rolling Stone, People, and TIME, along with collectible publications like Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, have dedicated readers who’ll pretty much buy up every copy, sellers say. “Magazines on Taylor Swift remain very popular, but seem to have plateaued,” the B&N staffer said, pointing to the emergence of pop singers Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan on the covers of special issues. They’re cutting into Swift’s still-large share of this market niche. Still, at Christmastime, everything from Swift to Carpenter gets bought by shoppers looking for stocking stuffers, Stanton notes. Seasonal sales aside, stores like Newsbreak rely on a base of customers who regularly visit to browse and buy. As Stanton puts it, “People love our store. Sometimes, we have four generations of readers come in at once. These are people who grew up reading our magazines. And they’ve been passing on that tradition from generation to generation.” •