Stephen Glover in the Independent reports that last month, the Guardian was hovering around 390,000 copies, a figure that could be exaggerated by bulk sales but that nevertheless represents a 3.5% circulation drop year on year.

Before the switch, the Guardian was selling around 360,000 copies, so it can be argued that overall the Berliner format has added 10% to what the broadsheet was selling.

But if you look back three years to the period before the Times and the Independent sliced their page size, the Guardian was selling 395,000 copies, which means that three years on, it has taken a slight hit to its circulation despite the Berliner.

The Times and the Indy, however, have added 10 and 20% respectively to their titles' sales since three years ago.  

Glover speculates that if the Guardian were a publicly traded company, that its shareholders would be all over it demanding answers for the huge investment and the apparently meager returns. He concludes, "I just hope that there is someone senior within the Guardian Media Group who grasps that the Berliner format was an editorially driven ideal that has not begun to give a return on investment."

Source: Independent (print version)