re: re: magazine circulation figures
The company I used to work at (publishes magazines for the classical music industry) wasn't audited by an external company for print run etc, but was still quite truthful about how many copies were printed (well, it's the classical music industry: there's no point in saying we printed 100,000 copies of something when the sum of people interested in classical music is blatantly less than that).

However, whenever potential advertisers wanted figures, we would give them readership numbers instead of print run (classical music people are stingy, so only buy one mag per 2 people).

Also, to boost the potential of someone advertising, we'd say that there just happened to be a theme centering around whatever particular area of the music world they worked in, even if the only editorial linked to that was a review or a passing mention in the news section. For example, we would tell an opera company in Poland that we were doing a special feature on opera in eastern europe, or a company specialising in music education that the next issue just happened to be focussing on young artists.

I'm out of that now, thank god. We do a massive publication every year in which loads of composers advertise their latest pieces, or do little adverts so people can commission them. They're generally really quite old men, who also quibble about the price, simply because they don't have that much money (composing not being terribly lucrative); I hated taking their money, and just before I left, I was on the brink of just telling them all that advertising wouldn't get them any more commissions, and that if I were them I would keep my hundred quid, not bother advertising, and use the money for something a lot more useful to them. I didn't say this to them, but it was really close. Again, thank god I'm out of advertising sales now.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Fri 28 Sep 2007, 15:54, Reply)