Honesty and the numbers game

For the poet, TS Eliot, April was the cruellest month, but for some shooting magazine publishers it’s not April but February which brings tears. Because it is in that month that they must come clean and tell the world how many copies on average each of their magazines has sold during the previous year. You will note, however, that it is only some, not all, who have to worry about it, as it is only those which, as it were, do the decent thing and allow a third party to audit their sales figures, who must then own up when the news is bad. For the rest – and in the shooting magazine market, that’s easily the majority – their sales claims remain untested.

So, are the numbers important? Well, like so much else the answer to that is, it depends. If you are an advertiser, being able to compare the amount you are being asked to pay with the number of copies of the magazine which actually end up in someone’s hands, allows you to make a valid comparison between one magazine and another. If all you have to go on is the figure quoted by a sales person then who knows? The industry body that takes care of these matters is the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) which scrutinises the sales information supplied by publishers and thereafter produces the ABC certificate which verifies their claims. And it has been doing so for more than forty years.

There are a number of shooting magazines which have been around for almost that length of time, but which so far have never allowed their sales claims to be validated in this way. Why not? It cannot be cost. Many suggest sales in the tens of thousands. If so, the ABC’s modest charges would be a drop in the ocean. And collating the data involves no administrative upheaval, so it cannot be for that reason either. It is here that one becomes aware of the maxim that having eliminated every possibility, whatever one is left with (no matter how unpalatable) must be the truth and in this case the conclusion is that there is a difference between what the publishers’ say and what the reality is.

So, if you want to put a publisher’s circulation claims to the test try this. The next time you are called by someone selling advertising space in a magazine which lacks an ABC, ask them to supply a written publisher’s statement of their magazine’s sales for the latest six months for which figures are available. Good luck.