• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 3, 2017

In what has become a familiar refrain, the steady drumbeat of declining magazine newsstand sales continued last year.

2016 brought another double-digit drop in the total number of single-copy sales. That’s according to the last figures from MagNet, which tracks newsstand sales and the performance of magazine wholesalers.

Overall magazine newsstand sales in the U.S. and Canada fell 12.3% to 373.2 million single copies in 2016, bringing in $2.1 billion of sales revenue, with the latter figure down 6.9% from the year before.

The latest figures contrast favorably with the previous year’s drops of 15.8% in copies sold and 13% in revenue, but this will be cold comfort as the long-term decline in newsstand sales shows no signs of leveling off.

Indeed, the sales numbers 2016 represent a steep decline from just a few years ago.

In 2013, retailers sold 621.2 million magazines copies at newsstands in U.S. and Canada, bringing in total revenues of $3.1 billion; thus last year’s volume is down 40% from three years previously, while revenues are down 32%.

Turning to specific magazine categories, women’s interest titles are leading the decline with a 15.9 drop in sales volume, followed closely by celebrity titles with a 15.5 drop.

The trend documented by MagNet is reflected in the results of individual publishers. For example, among publishers which release financial results, Time Inc. saw total newsstand sales drop 16% from $329 million in 2015 to $278 million in 2016.

Newsstand sales are one of the few measures for gauging the overall health of the magazine industry that are still readily available. The Publisher’s Information Bureau stopped publicizing figures for advertising pages, another key indicator, back in 2014.