After a splashy debut in the publishing world, magazines retooled for the iPad – such as Vanity Fair, Glamour and GQ – are not selling so well. Digital sales of these pubs dropped toward the end of this year, Women’s Wear Daily reports, based on figures made available to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Vanity Fair sold 8,700 digital editions of its November issue, down from its average of about 10,500 for the August, September and October issues, WWD said. Glamour sold 4,301 digital editions in September – but then went on to post a drop of 20% in sales for October and then another 20% in November. At 11,000 in sales, GQ’s November edition posted its worst performance since the iPad was released. Wired, whose iPad version debuted to much fanfare, averaged 31,000 in digital sales between July and September, but then its numbers started to decline in October and November, to 22,000 and 23,000, respectively, WWD concluded.

Not So Bad

Put this way, the numbers look bad. But examined in larger context - such as comparing them to print newsstand sales - the drop no longer seems to be an indictment against the iPad, according an analysis by Mashable.

After their initial spike,  the sales performance of issues on the iPad and iPhone roughly correlate their performance on the newsstand, it found. Still, though, there is something amiss with the numbers, Mashable continued: given the strong sales figures for both the iPad and iPhone, magazine sales should be trending higher.

But Why Aren't They Higher?

There are a number of reasons why they aren’t, Mashable believes including the magazine’s too-high price on the iPad, the difficulty in finding them in the App Store, the animated covers and interactive graphics are already getting old among readers and these files are large and problematic to download.