CircMatters, the media newsletter that reports on magazine circulation best practices, has named Fine Cooking to a list of 15 top magazines to receive the Circle of Success Award for superior performance in circulation management. According to Jack Hanrahan, editor of CircMatters, “We analyzed all major magazines based on the quality of their circulation. Fine Cooking was an easy choice as a winner of our Circle of Success Award despite the rigorous evaluation process and competition among many excellent magazines.”

Fine Cooking is enjoying outstanding success in the marketplace – with growth in rate base, subscriptions and single copy sales. Especially on newsstand, where most magazine unit sales are sharply trending down, Fine Cooking is up and outsells well-known competitors like Gourmet, Bon Appetit and Food & Wine, despite having a significantly higher cover price than the other epicurean titles.

Mr. Hanrahan added, “Fine Cooking’s circulation practices and performance are exemplary. They’re an excellent example of magazines doing things the right way – building quality circulation with best practices that assure marketers the benefits of advertising to highly engaged and involved readers.”

CircMatters’ evaluation of circulation quality examined three performance areas:

• Rate Base Performance: stating a guarantee, the 3-year history of making the guarantee both on average 6-month delivery and on issue-by-issue basis, bonus delivery above guarantee.
• Single Copy Sales Performance: demand and cover price, growth (tracked over 4 years where possible).
• Subscription Sales Performance: price on a per-copy basis, a high percent sold direct to publisher, low reliance on lesser quality subscription sources.

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