Rolling Stone’s controversial ‘Boston Bomber’ issue results in 102% jump in sales
Rolling Stone’s most provocative cover to date has outsold previous issues from the past year, despite reader pledges to boycott Rolling Stone and retailers vowing to pull the magazine from shelves.
The Rolling Stone issue featured alleged Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover and offered an in-depth look at how the young man came to plant a bomb at the Boston marathon earlier this year.
Many subsequently said the cover glamourized terrorism and retailers and readers alike refused to buy or sell the issue as Rolling Stone was condemned on Twitter and Facebook.
However, based on point-of-sale data from the Magazine Information Network, as collected by AdWeek, 13,232 retail copies of the issue sold between July 19 and 29.
Overall this resulted in a 102 per cent jump in retail sales over average per-issue sales for the past year.
However, it is worth noting that only 5 per cent of Rolling Stone’s total circulation is sold at retail but does signal that the controversial issue could be one of Rolling Stone’s best-selling yet.