UK: Guardian sales even out; Independent on Sunday's tabloid succeeds

When it was originally launched in September 2005, the Guardian's Berliner format helped the paper increase sales by 40% on its first day and pushed the paper over the 400,000 mark for the first time since March 2003. But October's sales, which included a DVD offer of a popular movie, dropped by 0.22% to 403,297 copies. 

Its total year on year rise was 24,871 copies or 6.57%.

The Independent on Sunday, which transformed itself into a compact in mid-October, reported a 13.27% rise in circulation, a boost of almost 30,000 copies. Year on year, the paper's circulation was up 7.3%.
 
Although the Guardian's Berliner format gave it a significant year on year boost, the fact that its circulation began to slide again (however modestly), after only a month of format change, a month which included a DVD promotion, reaffirms past percentages that show that format change temporarily boosts circulation, but that the rise quickly evens out and eventually begins to drop off.   

It is thus likely that the Independent on Sunday will not report a similar rise in circulation when November's figures are released and may actually lose some readers it gained from the initial switch.   

Still, some in the newspaper industry would tend to argue this point, as Peter Cole does in the Independent. 

Other notable percentages include the Financial Times, which continues to suffer a UK circulation slump with a year on year circulation decline of 4.5%, and The Times, which witnessed a 7.16% year on year rise, being helped by DVD sales in October.   

Source: The Guardian (here and here)