Looking at how other magazine sectors work

For those who are interested in the way the magazine business works elsewhere* than Canada, there are a couple of downloadable resources that are really quite good, even though self-serving. One was published last month in Britain by the Periodical Publishers Association and gives an enormous amount of revenue and share of market data for the British magazine sector. The Media Magazine Handbook brings together useful data on consumer, b-to-b, customer and digital magazine publishing. It's a fairly large file, but worth it for magazine mavens.

In the U.S., the data is more fractured and less revealing. Consumer magazine data, mainly for larger publishers, is provided by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA). Comparative, if not comparable, data on trade/b-to-b publishing is provided by American Business Media (although some of it is only available to non-members for a price). And the Custom Publishing Council provides its own version of data on the customer magazine sector.

*In Canada, Magazines Canada provides the most comprehensive collection of data and studies.