The Brutal Numbers Behind This Year's September Issue Sales

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

A photo posted by Cosmopolitan (Official) (@cosmopolitan) on Aug 8, 2014 at 9:08am PDT

The Alliance for Audited Media just released newsstand sales numbers for September 2014's biggest covers and even the magazines who came out ahead still suffered huge declines in sales compared to last year. According to WWD, Cosmopolitan's Lucy Hale cover won for highest sales at the newsstands with 698,500 total single-copy sales. InStyle was not-so-close behind with 503,400 total single-copy sales. Vogue's #InstaGirls cover rounded out the top three with 359,703 copies sold, and Glamour's Olivia Wilde cover sold 260,416 copies. At the low end, Allure's Chloë Grace Moretz cover sold 82,276 copies, Lucky's Dakota Fanning cover sold 77,115 copies, and Teen Vogue's Kendall Jenner cover sold 72,619 copies. W's Rihanna cover only sold 31,963 copies, but WWD notes that W is more subscriber-based and has never had a strong presence at the newsstand.

Compared to last year, these sales are pretty terrible across the board. In 2013, Cosmopolitan sold 1.1 million copies at the newsstand, which makes for a 35.1% sales decrease this year. InStyle's single-copy sales are down by 26.5%, and Vogue's sales are down by 28.1%. Glamour suffered the worst decline, with sales dropping nearly 50% from last year. In this comparison W actually came out ahead, posting a mere 4.9% loss in newsstand sales this year.
· September Cover Stars and Slips [WWD]
· Lucky Magazine Comes in Last in September Issue Ad Race [Racked]
· How Much Editorial Love Do Fashion Magazines Give Their Advertisers? [Racked]