Editing Playboy (section)

==={{anchor|Circulation}}Circulation history and statistics===
In 1971, ''Playboy'' had a circulation rate base of seven million, which was its high point.<ref name="peak">Dougherty, Philip H. (2 November 1982). [https://www.nytimes.com/1982/11/02/business/advertising-playboy-to-cut-circulation-rate-base.html Playboy to Cut Circulation Rate Base], ''[[The New York Times]]''</ref> The best-selling individual issue was the November 1972 edition, which sold 7,161,561 copies. One-quarter of all American college men were buying or subscribing to the magazine every month.<ref name="nextdoor">{{cite magazine |title=The Girls Next Door: The New Yorker |url=http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/03/20/060320crbo_books |magazine=The New Yorker |date=March 13, 2006 |access-date=December 16, 2012}}</ref> On the cover was model Pam Rawlings, photographed by [[Rowland Scherman]]. Perhaps coincidentally, a cropped image of the issue's centerfold (which featured [[Lena Söderberg]]) became a ''de facto'' [[Standard test image|standard image]] for testing image processing algorithms. It is known simply as the "[[Lenna (test image)|Lenna]]" (also "Lena") image in that field.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/~chuck/lennapg/lenna.shtml |title=The Rest of the Lenna Story |publisher=2.cs.cmu.edu |access-date=December 7, 2011}}</ref> In 1972, ''Playboy'' was the ninth highest circulation magazine in the United States.<ref name="list1972">[https://books.google.com/books?id=rYC_WEqUcAUC&pg=PA268 Media and Culture with 2013 Update: An Introduction to Mass Communication], p. 268 (chart posts a list cited from magazines.org in 2010, showing top ten circulation magazines in the United States in 1972 and 2010. The 1972 list was (1) ''Reader's Digest'' (17,825,661); (2) ''TV Guide'' (16,410,858); (3) ''Woman's Day'' (8,191,731); (4) ''Better Homes and Gardens'' (7,996,050); (5) ''Family Circle'' (7,889,587); (6) ''McCall's'' (7,516,960); (7) ''National Geographic'' (7,260,179); (8) ''Ladies' Home Journal'' (7,014,251); (9) ''Playboy'' (6,400,573); (10) ''Good Housekeeping'' (5,801,446))</ref>

The 1975 average circulation was 5.6 million; by 1981, it was 5.2 million and by 1982 down to 4.9 million.<ref name="peak"/> Its decline continued in later decades and reached about 800,000 copies per issue in late 2015,<ref name="oldnews"/> and 400,000 copies by December 2017.<ref name="woke">Bennett, Jessica (2 August 2019). [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/business/woke-playboy-millennials.html Will the Millennials Save Playboy?], ''[[The New York Times]]''</ref>

In 1970, ''Playboy'' became the first gentleman's magazine printed in [[braille]].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/29/us/blind-win-ruling-on-braille-playboy.html|title=BLIND WIN RULING ON BRAILLE PLAYBOY|work=The New York Times|date=August 29, 1986|access-date=October 16, 2011}}</ref> It is also one of the few magazines whose [[microfilm]] format was in color, not black and white.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ibiblio.org/archives-archivists/msg12465.html |title=Re: Nicholson Baker and NEH |website=Ibiblio.org |date=April 16, 2001 |access-date=February 14, 2016}}</ref>