A NEWSSTAND Repair Formula: MORE DATA = FEWER RETURNS =MORE MONEY

Single copy sales of magazines tracked by the Audit Bureau of Circulations swooned by 17%, from 64 million in 1998 to 53 million in 2002. In the first half of 2003, sales were down 13% over the same period in 2002, estimates the International Periodical Distributors Association. However, when it comes to doing something about newsstands, most magazine executives don't seem to have a game plan. To be fair, there is no simple answer, but it's clear where the solutions are to be found: in data gathering and the expert use of the kind of sell-through data that other consumer-marketing companies have used for decades.