Newly-launched Sunday edition of The Scottish Sun sheds 50,000 sales in a week
Industry reports suggest the Sunday edition of The Scottish Sun on Sunday shed almost 50,000 sales last weekend – losing the title of Scotland's biggest-selling newspaper after just one week.
News International's new Sunday tabloid, according to estimated unofficial figures, sold 323,000 copies in Scotland on its launch on February 26.
This put it more than 10,000 copies ahead of the longtime market leader, the Trinity Mirror-owned Sunday Mail. However, according to unofficial sales estimates The Scottish Sun recorded a fall in sales of about 15% to around 275,000 last Sunday.
Overall the Sun on Sunday is estimated to have sold about 2.6m copies across the UK for its second edition last weekend - down 17% to 19% week on week, or about 550,000 to 600,000 copies.
Media Guardian reports: “Trinity Mirror rival, the Sunday Mail, is thought to have improved its position week on week by more than 5000 copies to reclaim the mantle of top-selling Scottish newspaper with sales of 316,000, according to unofficial estimates.”
The Sunday Mail maintained a price cut from £1.30 to 50p in the north of Scotland and Tay regions for the second week running.
The Sunday Mail has traditionally been the market leader in Scotland, reporting a total circulation of 360,475 in June last year, the last full month the News of the World reported audited sales figures, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Of those 329,237 copies were sold in Scotland, compared with 241,600 for the News of the World.
The ABC figures for January show that the Sunday Mail has a circulation of 370,355 - a 1.4% month-on-month rise and 1.1% year-on-year sales increase, of which 357,724 were in Scotland.
News International has confirmed the Scottish Sun will again sell at 50p on Saturday and Sunday of this week.