Sales at seven-year high as success continues

The Independent continues to go from strength to strength, with yesterday's release of the audited circulation figures for August showing the 11th consecutive month of sales increases.

The Independent continues to go from strength to strength, with yesterday's release of the audited circulation figures for August showing the 11th consecutive month of sales increases.

In August, the average daily sale of The Independent increased to 262,588. This represents the highest total sale of the paper since October 1997, and is a rise of 20.8 per cent on the same period last year. Over the same period, The Times was up 2.9 per cent while The Daily Telegraph was down 1.8 per cent and The Guardian was down 4.2 per cent. The Guardian's UK sale fell below 300,000, and now stands at 295,661. The sales gap between The Independent and The Guardian in relation to UK sales has narrowed by 99,634 since January 2003.

The Independent's share of the quality newspaper market is now at 12 per cent, which is its highest mark for eight years.

Meanwhile, the most recent interim figures published by the National Readership Survey show The Independent making further progress.

For the six-month period to June 2004, the total Monday-to-Friday readership of The Independent increased to 722,000, a rise of 24.3 per cent on the same period the previous year. All other quality titles showed a decrease.

Terry Grote, managing director of Independent News and Media (UK), said yesterday: "We would like to thank our readers and advertisers for their continued support. We intend to build on our success, and further improvements and developments can be expected."