The Daily Star Sunday and the Sunday Express have benefited from cross-promotional campaigns that have seen the Sunday Express discounted to as little as 40p when bought with the tabloid.
The Daily Star Sunday was up 3.04% from 370,032 in July to 381,238 in August and has now risen in circulation for the past three months, but was down 4.99% year on year.
Its stablemate also rose by 1.08% from 568,740 in July to 574,872 copies, with the Sunday Express also recording a boost in sales for the last three months since May.
Its arch rival in the mid-market, the Mail On Sunday, also showed a positive performance up 0.53% from 1,954,616 in July to 1,964,945 in August. Its year on year performance was still 2.42% down.
The tabloid market slipped during the August holiday period, with the News of the World slipping back 0.75% from 2,890,523 in July to 2,868,850 copies in August, 8.08% year on year. However, it did not fall as far as its main competitor the Sunday Mirror, which dropped 1.3% from 1,155,101 copies in July to 1,140,118 in August, and 7.85% year on year.
Another tabloid rival, Trinity Mirror's The People, seems to be hanging on to its loyal readership base, only dropping 0.43% from 539,692 in July to 537,381 copies last month. Despite the blip, the title has stayed fairly stable since the beginning of the year, but like most titles recorded a drop on the previous year (8.36%).
In the world of the broadsheets, the English titles were trumped by their cousins north of the border, with Scotland on Sunday trouncing the competition to jump 16.49% from a year low figure of 51,263 copies in July to 59,716 copies in August. On the year, the title dropped by 8.13%.
This was closely followed by a 9.75% rise in circulation from the Sunday Herald, which was picked up by 40,069 people in July and 43,974 people in August, bucking the holiday trend but not bucking the annual trend by dropping 0.17% year on year, which was a small amount compared to rivals.
Scottish tabloid the Sunday Mail was boosted by 2.2% up from 388,954 in July to 397,493, down 7.26% on the year.
Fellow North of the Border read the Sunday Post was up marginally by 0.96% from 325,580 in July to 328,710 last month. It’s year-on-year figure for August was less impressive, down 7.37%.
As for their English broadsheet cousins, the Independent On Sunday rose 0.75% from 155,565 copies in July to 156,725 copies in August. However, it still has a way to go to catch its year long high in April of 168,151 copies. The title was also down 2.54% year on year.
The Observer dropped 1.76% from 314,602 copies in July to 309,068 in August. However, year on year the title has not arrested its decline and still stands with a circulation deficit of 14.57%.
The broadsheets of middle England, The Sunday Times and The Sunday Telegraph failed to set the sector alight during the month of August.
The Sunday Times did not benefit at all from the fact that its website had disappeared behind a paywall, which should have led to more purchases of the print product, in fact it dropped 0.18% from 1,068,158 in July to 1,066,240 copies in August, down year on year by 8.46%.
The Sunday Telegraph was slightly up 0.31% from 505,214 copies in July to 506,781 copies in August, but was still down 15.41% year on year.
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