Paris (AFP)

Sales of mainstream newspapers and magazines fell 3% in 2020-2021 from the previous year, despite a surge in digital sales, according to data released Thursday by the Alliance for Press Figures and media (ACPM).

Between July 2020 and June 2021, 1.9 billion copies of press publications were sold in France, including 371 million in digital versions.

While total sales are down 3.1% compared to 2019-2020, sales in electronic format are up 33.5%.

These now represent nearly 20% of total sales, compared to 14% over the previous period.

The press represents 8.3 million copies distributed and 78 million visits recorded each day, underlines the ACPM.

Between July 2020 and June 2021, only the national daily press (PQN) saw its overall sales (paper + digital) increase by almost 4% with 1.4 million copies sold, mainly in digital format (of which sales have increased). jumped by + 40%).

Consequence: in 2020-2021, paper sales represent only 38.8% (against 54.6% in 2019-2020) of all sales made by the PQN.

The frequentation of online press sites (excluding the professional press), which had exploded during confinement, continues to soar (+ 6.9%) with 27 billion visits recorded over 12 months.

Apart from the sites and applications of the professional and free press, whose attendance has fallen, all those of the other categories of publications have benefited from "this unprecedented year" rich in topicality, according to the ACPM.

Those of the magazine press recorded the most visits (8.7 billion visits, + 7%), followed by the regional daily press (8.5 billion visits, + 10.3%) while the sites of the regional weekly press recorded attendance records (+ 28.9% with 990 million visits).

"All families included" (professional and free press included), the ACPM notes a "high consumption of the web" leading to an increase of 5.2% "in the volumes of visits recorded by press sites and applications".

Regarding press sales (general public and professional), the ACPM "neutralized" the months of March to June 2020 due to the health crisis and compared the declarations on honor for 2020/2021 to an equivalent period in 2019 / 2020.

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