Lady Gaga, A Newsstand Hit
THE LADY’S A WINNER: Put Lady Gaga in anything — flesh-colored bra, black bustier, meat dress, artillery-undie extravaganza — and it doesn’t matter. She sells. According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Gaga was the runaway hit at the newsstand in 2010 for monthly and biweekly magazines. The results don’t extend all the way through the end of the year, and they do vary (figures for Condé Nast titles go through November; Hearst titles through October). But it’s safe to say no celebrity will catch up in time to match Gaga’s strong and steady performance throughout the year.
Through the end of September, machine-gun-wielding Gaga’s July 8 cover for Rolling Stone was the top-selling issue of the year for the magazine, with 245,000 copies sold, a total that is nearly three times better than its 2010 average. (It didn’t hurt that it was the same issue with the big Stanley McChrystal profile, one of the most explosive magazine pieces of the year.) For Cosmopolitan’s April issue, the Gaga cover sold 1.7 million copies, the top seller through the end of October. The Gaga September Vanity Fair issue sold 450,000 copies, the title’s second-best seller of the year (behind only Angelina Jolie) through November, and more than 80,000 better than its average. Gaga on the January issue of Elle was the magazine’s third-best seller of the year through October. And if rumors on the Web are to be believed — that Gaga will grace the cover of Vogue in March — Anna Wintour has plenty of reasons to rest easy.
