/ 19 August 2011

Mail & Guardian defies declining sales trend

The Mail & Guardian continues to post growth in an environment of general decline, the latest ABC results show.

Results for the second quarter of 2011 indicate an increase of almost 9% year-on-year in single-copy sales and a similar growth in individual subscriptions.

The M&G‘s new distribution infrastructure and the work of its circulation department has provided a boost, said editor Nic Dawes adding that the gains would not have been possible without the strengthening of the editorial product.

“Single-copy sales are readers who personally make the decision to buy at the newsstand because they are convinced by what we are doing,” Dawes said this week. “The same applies to new subscriptions. The numbers would look even better if we could include subscriptions to the newspaper’s Kindle edition.”

Dawes predicted that when the work by the sub-editors’ department on the iPad edition was translated into final product form, the circulation uptick evident in recent quarters would be even stronger.