Some days ago I was talking to a former colleague of mine who is still working for the same computer magazine I used to. He was happy about the circulation (they were still the number one computer magazine in circulation) and the fact that the gap from the second one is bigger in September than it was in August.  This conversation gave me the starting point for this blog post as I was already looking for something to write.

Numbers are a tricky thing. You can interpret them as you like (most of the times).  When I started working in the magazine industry in 2002 and up until 2005 there weren’t any official numbers about monthly magazine circulations.  Those days we kept hearing about circulations from 40.000 to 60.000 per month but there was nothing official or at least nothing publicly official. All data from 2005 and up until now are available on the Internet (Europi and Argos).

So I did a simple comparison. I took the latest circulations (September 2009) and compare them to past years (always September).

Numbers reveal 32% drop in average circulation for September for all magazines here in Greece, but they get more depressing when it comes to computer magazines where the drop in circulation from 2005 to 2009 is more than 60%!

In 2009 there was a sudden drop in the number of magazines announcing circulations. From 92 to 57!


Total circulation was down -49% from September 2005 to September 2009. The global economic crisis is not the only reason. From 2007 to 2008 all Greek Magazines lost about 300.000 readers!

In 2005 a Greek monthly magazine was selling an average number of 31.000. In 2009 the same number is 21.000.


The slight increase in 2007 was due to an incredible offer for a free ADSL modem from PC Magazine which almost doubled it's circulation from 24.591 (September 2006) to 46.944 (September 2007).  From 109.704 total circulation of computer magazines in September 2005 fell to 43.020 in September 2009. (I have included the four biggest in circulation magazines)

In 2005 a computer magazine in Greece was selling 27.260. In September 2009 the same number is 10.755, a drop of -60,54%! Again the slight increase in 2007 was from the free ADSL modem that doubled the circulation of PC Magazine.

This is not a complete study in monthly magazines circulation in Greece. I only took in consideration September from each year.

All things considered it seems that 2006 was the last good year for magazines in Greece. After that there is a sudden drop in circulation numbers. And it’s not only because of the economic crisis. In computer magazines the problem of "lost readership" appeared earlier. It is simple logic. This kind of readers would be the first to turn to other free sources of information like the Internet before, for example, readers of women’s magazine would do.