No Price-Hike Pain Yet for 'In Touch,' 'Life & Style'

Back in August, when Bauer Publishing announced plans to raise the cover price on In Touch and Life & Style from $1.99 to $2.99, I predicted both magazines would see a big drop in newsstand sales.

But that wasn't the case in their first week at the new price. According to projections based on scan data, Life & Style sold about 670,000 copies, snagging a 13 percent share of the single-copy market for celebrity weeklies. The title usually claims about 12 percent of the market.

In Touch, meanwhile, sold 1.09 million, a bit below its average of 1.3 million. Its 22 percent market share was down about 2 points from its average.

And since In Touch and Life & Style lost no appreciable share between them, there wasn't much slack for the other weeklies to take up. People (24 percent), Us Weekly, Star (12 percent) and OK all had pretty typical weeks.

Of course, there's no reason to think that just because regular readers of the two Bauer titles either didn't notice or chose to ignore the higher price this week, they won't let it affect their purchases going forward. Stay tuned.