The Australian, the Daily Telegraph and the Herald Sun together with APN News & Media’s entire stable of regional daily newspapers are among the major newspapers that have begun voluntarily reporting their average sales numbers for each day of the week.

A total of 22 newspapers have voluntarily reported average day-of-week sales data for Monday through Friday for the period-ended September 2011. It follows the introduction of new print rules for the ABC on 1 July 2011.

Day-of-week reporting will become compulsory for national, metropolitan daily and regional daily newspapers (with a circulation over 25,000) from 1 January, 2012. Some ABC newspapers have deferred reporting until it becomes mandatory in 2012.

ABC chief executive, Paul Dovas said: “This is the first time day-of-week sales data had been reported and was the result of a comprehensive industry-led review of the reporting of average net paid sales and its associated categories.”

“The ABC’s publisher members are to be congratulated for their commitment to the audit process and more frequent reporting,” said Dovas.

The review of the rules was launched at the ABC’s AGM in October 2010 to meet media buyer and advertiser requests for greater transparency and more granular reporting for print media.

Previously Monday to Friday sales data had been released as an average of aggregated sales for each quarter, while average sales figures for Saturday and Sunday editions were published.

Other metropolitan newspapers that have been voluntarily releasing average day-of-week sales ahead of the 30 December deadline include the Advertiser in Adelaide, the Mercury in Hobart and The Courier Mail in Brisbane.

Regional daily newspapers that have embraced the new reporting rules include The Cairns Post, The Geelong Advertiser, Gold Coast Bulletin and 13 newspapers in the APN News & Media portfolio.

Other significant changes under the new rules include a tightening of the definitions around education sales, with the education sales category replaced by separate categories for school sales and tertiary education subscription sales, and the separation of accommodation and hotel sales into two different categories.

For the first time all category data will be reported as whole numbers and regional daily newspapers have introduced reporting of a Monday to Friday average in line with metropolitan newspaper reporting.