The evolving rules for digital editions will let publishers continue to experiment with their tablet editions

The latest Audit Bureau of Circulation report from the UK shows the digital edition circulation levels for 72 titles, with Men's Health leading the pack with 7,779 digital edition copies.

As the new figures cover a period of time that spans the introduction of Apple's Newsstand app, these numbers are expected to rise in the next reporting period, which would be January to June of this year.

The ABC is relaxing its previous policy rule that a digital edition must not be more than five percent different than the print edition. This has led some publishers to believe that their digital editions must be purely replica editions in order to qualify. But publishers continue to experiment with their tablet editions and now the ABC says that a digital edition can be up to 25 percent additional editorial content. The new rules do state, however, that 95 percent of the print content must also be included in the digital edition.

"ABC is evolving the digital editions rules very fast, for example they have been updated 3 times within the last year," an ABC statement states. "ABC is continually reviewing feedback from publishers and agencies to inform changes to the rules. This is necessary because digital products are evolving rapidly with publishers trying out different approaches, which can vary widely across the industry."

Publishers can also audit their publications on a separate Digital Publication certificate under the new rules, allowing for the auditing of purely digital-only publications.

Journalism.co.uk, whose story can be found here, posted the digital results for the top ten British publications:

1. Men's Health - 7,779
2. T3 - 7,327
3. GQ - 5,731
4. Cosmopolitan - 5,675
5. Men's Fitness - 3,987
6. Esquire - 3,745
7. MacUser - 3,648
8. Stuff - 3,630
9. Wired - 3,190
10. Total Film - 2,910