The circulation woes of Canadian magazines continue to mount, but new data released Monday suggest that, if things aren't improving for the industry, at least they're getting worse less quickly.

Among 63 top Canadian magazines tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, total sales — including paid subscriptions and newsstand purchases — were down 1.6 per cent for the six months ending in June compared with the same period last year. Valuable "single-copy" sales, as newsstand buys are known, were down 8.4 per cent from the year before.

The circulation drops were less drastic than last December, when the industry was hit by a 5.3 per cent fall in overall paid circulation and a nearly 24 per cent plunge in newsstand sales.

"It's starting to stabilize, but it's still dropping," said Marco Ursi, editor of Masthead, a trade publication for Canadian magazines.

"It could be attributed to a number of things; it's all kind of speculative. One would be the recession, the idea that consumers are spending less on everything, including magazines. The most drastic thing would be people just buying magazines less, but subscription numbers are pretty stable, so it's more likely something to do with retail."

The audit bureau's figures, which include many but not all of Canada's biggest general-interest titles, looked dour for all but a handful of them. Of the top 10 magazines by circulation, only Oxygen Women's Fitness showed any substantial circulation growth in the first half of this year, attracting 20,000 more subscribers to offset a small dip in newsstand sales.

Reader's Digest, the top Canadian magazine by circulation, saw newsstand sales plummet 18 per cent. Chatelaine, at No. 2, registered a robust 37 per cent rise in newsstand purchases, but not enough to counter the loss of 34,000 paid subscribers.

"The good news is we're very happy with where we are, because the whole industry took a hit in the last year," Reader's Digest Canada CEO Tony Cioffi said in an interview. "The signs indicate that everything is starting to look a little brighter."

Despite the loss of print readers, Reader's Digest Canada on Monday reported a one per cent uptick in advertising revenues across its various magazines and websites, which also include Best Health and Our Canada. Cioffi attributed it to his company's strategy of diversifying its publications onto the internet.

Ray of hope

The situation at Reader's Digest provides a ray of hope for rivals like Maclean's and Canadian House & Home, which have been bleeding circulation during the ongoing recession.

"It's not likely that they'll lose too much in terms of advertising," Ursi said of what the latest numbers mean for the industry. "But they'll lose newsstand revenue, and the newsstand is a more profitable source of revenue than subscriptions."

Canadian magazines typically sell 80-90 per cent of their copies through subscriptions — the reverse of Britain and Australia, where the vast majority of readers pick up publications from newsstands, Ursi said. Subscriptions are usually sold at a steep discount to a publication's newsstand price and involve higher costs for mailing and soliciting renewals.

Advertising revenue for magazines is already significantly down, with the average hit across the industry ranging up to 30 per cent.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations also released figures for U.S. magazines on Monday. Single-copy sales retreated 12 per cent from January to June compared with the same period the year prior, while total circulation edged down one per cent.

The top U.S. title by circulation was AARP The Magazine, sent to all 24 million members of the American Association of Retired Persons. The biggest non-membership magazine was Reader's Digest (8.2 million), followed by Better Homes and Gardens (7.6 million).

With files from The Associated Press