Bulgarian magazine trade
SOFIA – Big international magazines have launched local-language print editions in Bulgaria in the past couple of years, attracted by the robust growth of the country’s advertising market and bringing tougher competition with them. «For the luxury brands, it is important to publish their advertisements in one and the same edition globally, which guarantees the quality of the media,» the production director of the Bulgarian edition of the Foreign Policy magazine, Ilin Stanev, told SeeNews. «The second reason is the growth of the advertising market [in Bulgaria], which is also evident from the boom of the Bulgarian magazines,» Stanev added. Economedia group started publishing the Foreign Policy bi-monthly in Bulgarian at the beginning of 2005 and the Business Spotlight bi-monthly magazine later the same year. Foreign Policy has a circulation of 5,000 and Business Spotlight has around 2,000. German business media group Verlagsgruppe Handelsblatt and Bulgarian publishing group Agency for Investment Information (AII) own 50 percent each in Economedia. «The magazine is a product which depends quite a lot on the economy of Bulgaria. Things have improved over the past two or three years, which has increased the people’s appetite to read magazines,» said Dimitar Drumev, managing director of the Sanoma Bliasak Bulgaria publishing house. Bulgaria’s economy has been maintaining stable growth over the past seven years. The government has projected 5.5 percent economic growth for 2006 after an expected 5.8 percent rise in the GDP in 2005 and the 5.6 percent growth recorded in 2004. «The second factor is that these magazines have a clear identity; they are well positioned everywhere, so they are a product which more people would enjoy,» Drumev added. Sanoma Bliasak Bulgaria publishes National Geographic magazine in a monthly circulation of 68,000 and women’s monthly magazines Elle and Cosmopolitan in circulation of 40,000 and 50,000 copies respectively. Attica Media Bulgaria, which published the first Bulgarian issue of Playboy magazine nearly four years ago, was among the first to launch international branded magazines in Bulgarian. Later on, the company launched women’s monthly Grazia, originally edited by Italian publisher Mondadori and which now has a circulation of 35,000. Attica Media Bulgaria’s latest project is the Maxim magazine monthly, which hit the stands in November, targeting circulation of 50,000 within six months. Playboy, which has circulation of 50,000 in Bulgaria, is a brand of US Playboy Enterprises Inc. The British publisher Dennis Publishing owns the Maxim brand. Sofia-based Cash Media Group launched The Economist’s two Annual Reports in Bulgarian at the end of 2004 and started publishing the Bulgarian-language edition of BusinessWeek magazine earlier this month. BusinessWeek’s debut Bulgarian edition had circulation of 12,750. Market niches More foreign magazines are expected to come to the Bulgarian market over the next few years, Drumev said. «I believe that the invasion of foreign media into the Bulgarian market will continue for a long time; more and more specialized magazines will come here,» he added. «I have heard talk that [men’s monthly magazines] FHM, GQ, and [women’s monthly] Marie Claire, have discussed the possibility to appear on the Bulgarian market,» Stanev said but did not elaborate. He added that the Bulgarian media market niches still unoccupied were in the teenagers’ and the sensational segments. At present, Egmont Bulgaria publishes teenagers’ Bravo magazine in the local language. «Another sector, which is still empty, is the one of the editions like Harvard Business Review, Executive Manager or Foreign Affairs, but they are too expensive for the Bulgarian publisher,» Stanev said. «I will be happy to see magazines which will help us in the area where we are the weakest: We are the weakest in management,» Valery Tsenkov, the editor in charge of the BusinessWeek magazine, said. Competition heats up Several new Bulgarian magazines have appeared on the local market in the past two years as well, including women’s monthlies Anna and Beauty and lifestyle monthly magazines Motor Show and Slavi Magazine. «We would like to emphasize the Bulgarian brands, because they are no less interesting. On the contrary, they are more flexible to adapt, to think of concepts suitable for the market, and the investment is not that big,» Drumev said. «I believe that the foreign brands will make some of the domestic ones disappear and only the strong ones, like Eva, will survive,» Attica Media Bulgaria’s managing director, Milko Stoimenov, said. Eva is a popular local women’s monthly, published by Bulgaria’s Pressgroup Holding, which also publishes Monitor daily and the Politika weekly newspaper.
