Taylor Swift Doesnt Sell MagazinesIs She Overexposed?
You may have noticed, its been a very Taylor Swift year around here. If all the pert, bland pretty pretty princess-ing about was starting to bore you, good news: youre not alone. Apparently Taylor Swift is real bad at moving copies of the magazines she covers.
WWD filed a new report today that breaks down sales of issues covered by Swift and
its surprisingly abysmal! Strangely, the artist who wins every award for which shes nominated and seems to sell a million records when she sneezes
doesnt find success on newsstands.
Or her maybe her fans hate reading?
For one, Swifts Vogue cover sold about half of Gagas:
For Vogue, Swift sold 329,371 copies, digital sales included, which was a little above the six-month average that ended in June 2012, but no match for Lady Gaga, the magazines top seller last year, with about 602,000 copies. Or for that matter, Adele, the second-best seller with 410,343. All numbers come from the publishers statements to the Alliance for Audited Media, which may change slightly after theyre audited.
In all fairness, Gaga covered the September issue, an issue thats picked up by even casual fashionistas.
However, over at Glamour, she fell short of
Lauren Conrad:
Swift did OK for Glamour in November but with a little over 443,000 copies, she couldnt beat reality TV star Lauren Conrad in May who was the years runaway best-seller (a little over 500,000), or designer and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham in September (about 482,000).
Ditto for Bazaar Swift sold 138,412 copies, a little above the average for the period, but far below Gwen Stefanis September (166,365).
She had already been booked for Cosmos December cover when Joanna Coles came on as editor in chief of the sex-and-makeup monthly. Swift flopped, with the issue the weakest in a year that underperformed overall she sold a little over a million copies, or 20 percent below the six-month average that ended in December 2012. Swift was even outsold by actress Zooey Deschanel, who took the dubious honor of having the years second-worst seller.
Glamour EIC Cindi Leive hypothesizes that Swift fell out of favor right around her relationship with One Directions Harry Styles: There may have been a little hiccup for her right around the 1-D relationship, but then adds But its nothing a pro cant come back from. Id put money on her for the long run.
HuffPo posits that the disappointing numbers come from good old fashioned overexposurea problem for which Swift herself is largely to blame. After all, shes on seemingly every magazine cover all the time and, in the accompanying interviews, keeps saying stuff like this and this and especially this.
Andalthough we were jokingthere might be some credence to our theory that Swifts fans just arent big readers (insofar as shes challenging to tolerate if youve ever so much as glanced at her lyrics).
Then again, all this will probably just result in an album about how hard it is to sell magazines.
