Discount Magazine Publications

I'm french and currently living in the US. Why are magazines subscription so cheap here?

In France, if you get a 12 issue subscription to a 5 euro magazine, it'll typically be 40 or 50 euros- you save a bit but not that much. Here you can get subscriptions to magazines that cost $5 per issue for $10 a year. Am I missing something? Why is it so cheap?

Public Comments

1. we think they are expensive...but magazines do not make money from the subs, they make it from the advertising.
2. It's mass production. We are a big country with a lot of people. The more a product is bought, the more the price drops. Also, there are a ton of advertisements that help to keep the price down. Hope that explains it.
3. its so cheap because our economy is so messed up. these magazine companies know that people aren't gonna pay for a year subscription for a ridiculous amount of money when there other things that we need to worry about.
4. Already two good answers. Basically, US magazines make most of their money from advertising revenues. The larger the subscriber base the more they can charge for their advertising; they go to their clients and say, "See here. We have 500,000 subscribers and that's not counting news stand sales." So, that's where they make most of their money. Just pick-up an American magazine like Vogue and see that it's basically more of a catalog of advertising than it is a magazine with any real articles. Also, we are a large country with a diverse population. So, with something like 300 million people to sell to, it's pretty easy to see the economics of mass production. Oh, and let's not forget our neighbors to the north in Canada; those folks also subscribe to US magazines.
5. Most make a lot of money from advertising. I used to subscribe to several home and women's magazines but dropped my subscriptions in the past few years. I kept getting bills to renew and the prices kept dropping. Two of the magazines renewed my subscription for several years (one for 4 years now) and I believe it is because they need to have a high enough circulation in order to charge the advertisers a lot of money. So I have gotten over nearly 100 magazines for FREE.