Vanity Fair is busy erecting their huge temporary buildings in Beverly Hills for their Oscar party tonight.
But the magazine that used to have clout like crazy has been reduced to giving away magazines in the UK to pump up their circulation.
According to ABC, which does the auditing in the UK, Vanity Fair’s monthly circulation in Great Britain clocks in at just over 58K copies Sounds good until you see the breakdown: over 23,000 of those copies are free. They’re given away.
The actual paid circulation looks a lot different: just 18,634 in subscriber copies — which are deeply discounted — and 14,973 in single copies bought on the newsstand. Their digital issue number is insignificant — just 6,476.
In the US, which has a far bigger population, Vanity Fair sells 1.2 million magazines a year, or 120,000 per issue. This is a far cry from its halcyon days under Tina Brown and Graydon Carter. There’s no immediate breakdown of free copies, but it’s likely to be commensurate with the UK numbers.
In the US, Vanity Fair circulation is dwarfed by People, AARP, Better Homes and Gardens, and many other periodicals. None of them has an Oscar party. But none of them need to, I guess.
