How papers try to buy readers

The big news story this week, of course, is that The Times - as its front page trumpeted on Saturday - has increased its year-on-year sales while the Daily Telegraph's has dropped.

Then again, maybe it is The Guardian's scoop that its own circulation is up by 0.5 per cent against a market plunging by 2.3 per cent. Or perhaps it is the Sunday Times exclusive that its full-price sale comfortably exceeds that of its combined rivals, or the Daily Express's claim to be "Britain's fastest-rising newspaper" or the Daily Star's "simply awesome" news of its "stunning" circulation rise. It's hard to know which paper to believe.

In fact, as this month's audited newspaper sales again proved this week, there are lies, damned lies and circulation statistics. When the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) released its latest tables, reproduced in part below, it was inevitable that Fleet Street would place endless interpretations on them, whether they chose year-on-year or month-on-month comparisons, or "bulk sales". Only a few stayed silent, such as The Independent and the Sunday People, which no calculation could present as winners.

But victory comes at a cost. For the Telegraph Group, that runs to the millions that subsidise its discounted voucher schemes, currently accounting for two out of three sales on a Sunday. For the Daily Mirror, which last week stepped back from a price war with The Sun, it meant a weekly £1 million subsidy to readers. Whether buying TV ads to promote holidays, dumping copies with airlines or printing editorial supplements, newspapers are casting around huge sums to buy circulation. Yet can the results be justified?

Not according to the media buyers, who see bulk sales as particularly pointless. After all, as Adam Smith of Zenith Optimedia says, it is only advertisers (apart from gung-ho newspaper executives) who care about the numbers. "It's a mystery to me why they fiddle the figures so much," he says. "Bulking is not criminal, but it serves no great economic purpose. We also cast a skunk eye at subscription sales. If someone hasn't decided to pay full price, they're less motivated to read that newspaper."

Newspapers have other tricks up their sleeves. For some, foreign sales - less care-fully audited than those at home - offer a life-line: the Financial Times sells 307,000 of its 480,000 copies abroad. For others, voucher promotions - such as that for the Daily Mail's Queen Mother plate - work, often boosted by costly television support, or giveaways, such as the Oasis CD promised in this week's Sunday Times. But the ruse causing most controversy is counting dumped copies as sales.

The Daily Mirror proclaimed in April that it was abandoning bulk sales in favour of "more effective" forms of marketing. The argument makes sense to News International, which sees such giveaways as commercially pointless, especially for tabloids (The Times, by contrast, still gives away 49,000 of its 659,000 UK and Ireland copies). "There are 'genuine bulk sales', such as on airlines, where people sit down and read you, but dumping 300 copies unopened in a Little Chef is not legitimate, and it costs an arm and a leg," says a senior source in Wap-ping. Two years ago, he says, the Mirror was posting 69,000 bulks, and The Sun fewer than 3,000. Last month, The Sun was down to 223.

In its determination to present its price-cutting strategy as a success, the Mirror Group hopes to write its own circulation history. Last May, its bulk circulation was 53,000, so it has asked the ABC to let it retrospectively restate last year's figures to exclude them. "All we're asking for is that, when people assess the health of our circulation figures, they are measuring like with like," explains Wally Cowley, the group's circulation sales director. An ABC ruling is expected in September.

The bureau's 100 staff number-crunch like tax inspectors: each month, auditors visit newspapers, and once a year inspectors spend three days there. Occasionally, wrongdoings are revealed: last March, it disallowed "a large quantity" of Guardian-Observer bulk sales. Martyn Gates, the ABC's director of newspapers, stresses that errors usually occur through ignorance rather than malice, although evidence of fraud at the Birmingham Post and Mail three years ago led to reforms.

Some papers, though, have proved that editorial innovation, backed by investment, can boost sales. At The Observer, editor Roger Alton gives much credit for recent rises to its

monthly food and sport magazines. According to marketing director Marc Sands, the two supplements have increased monthly circulation by almost 60,000 to 460,000, and about half those visiting on a sport week tend to return the next Sunday. "We chose editorial supplements not subscriptions or CDs," he says. "It's a newspaper, not a music magazine."

CD giveaways boost The Observer's circulation by up to 100,000, but they tend not to stay. "The key is retention over future weeks," says Sands. "For us, price doesn't come into it. The Guardian is up on Saturday from 85p to £1, with no loss in sales." Saturday sales have risen from 515,000 to about 550,000 this past year, which keeps the daily average above 400,000, even if Saturdays lose money.

Still, there is one guaranteed winner - you, the reader, can currently choose between the Express, Mirror and Sun at 20p, the Star at 10p, the Daily Mail offering £25,000 a year for life, or the Times and Telegraph papers for just £1 a week. You may even enjoy what you read.