Paid Circulation

accounting term used by publishers and their auditors to indicate the average number of copies of a publication sold per issue. This term is used by the Audit Bureau of Circulations in their publisher's statements (see ABC statement and Audit Reports). The figure is arrived at by dividing the total number of subscription and newsstand-sold copies for all issues of the period by the total number of issues. For example: Magazine Z, a monthly, sold 14 million copies in a six-month period. The average net paid circulation is 14,000,000 4 6, since there were six issues in the time period or 2.3 million copies sold per issue.