Anyone looking for evidence of readers migrating in an orderly fashion from paper to point-and-click will be disappointed. The magazines with the most significant percentage of their sales on tablet or phone were in a relatively narrow band of predominantly male interest titles – such as T3 (42.3%), Stuff (19.33%), GQ (9.58%), Top Gear (8.8%) and the Economist (5.72%) – and some of the other percentages hinted at less than transformational change.
Beyond the business class lounge neither readers nor advertisers seem to have a massive appetite for a new form of delivery. Vogue sells 192,763 print copies compared to 8,314 digital ones, Good Housekeeping 410,981 compared to 3,561. TV Times only sold 217 "copies" on digital compared to 254,376 on paper. It's not the only title that can't decide whether to stick or twist. Look at it from the publishers' point of view. Are they moving from one format to another or contemplating a future where the complexity increases but the revenue doesn't?
Nevertheless, as the publishers have noted to their surprise, these advertisers still appear to believe in the charisma of paper. It doesn't much matter what any media commentator says about Carole Radziwill's underwhelming thoughts on mystique, the 18 pages of white lace for spring or whether there is anything that David Bailey hasn't already said about fame, the pages of Porter that really matter are the 26 between the cover and the first page of editorial, which are occupied by Chanel, Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and others in an order which has no doubt been the subject of much arm-wrestling.
