It looks like not everyone has Bieber Fever. Vanity Fair”s February Justin Bieber cover, which featured him covered in lipstick kisses, is shaping up to be the worst-selling issues in nearly 20 years for the magazine.
But Bieb”s in really good company. According to a story in WWD, the Bieber cover has sold around 246,000 newsstand copies based on unadjusted figures provided by the Audit Bureau of Circulation. The only other covers that have performed worse are Will Smith in July 1999 and Harrison Ford in July 1993. Vanity Fair is averaging 342,000 copies per issue this year.
While we”re piling on the Bieb, his October 2010 Teen Vogue cover and People”s April 2010 cover each sold anywhere from 12-25% below normal. The numbers for his recent Rolling Stone and US Weekly covers aren’t available.
The thinking must have been that even though all three mags” demo are older than the average Bieber fan (we”d say even Teen Vogue”s average reader is older than the typical Bieb fan) that parents would buy the magazines for their little darlings. Looks like it didn”t work, but we”d hardly take this as a sign of any cessation in Bieber”s popularity.