Magazine Readers Per Copy

Magazine research first developed total audience estimates for major magazines more than 30 years ago. It was soon recognized that the relationship between Total audience and circulation was not a constant one across magazines. One way of summarizing this relationship is to divide one number by the other and arrive at the number of readers per copy:

Total Audience/Circulation = Readers Per Copy

The ways in which the average copy of a magazine can acquire multiple readers is well understood since they are part of our everyday experience. A given copy can be read by more than one member of a household, and also indeed by visitors to the household. It may be passed on to other households. Most important, it may enter a public place of some kind, and be read by many people. Familiar examples are beauty and barber shops: doctors' and dentists' offices; waiting and reception rooms of all kinds; libraries and clubs; airplanes; and so on.

While we understand quite well the various ways in which copies can acquire readers, we lack a detailed understanding of the reasons why one magazine may differ from another on average-i.e., how it can it be that one magazine has substantially more readers per copy than another. Yet all surveys of total audiences provide examples of this. Surveys which measure a wide range of magazines (such as Simmons and TGI) yield a wide range of estimates of readers per copy, even up to 1:10.