The secret to have a magazine sell-out at news-stands is to put Lady Gaga on your cover! Women’s Wear Daily’s round up of numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations reveals Gaga to be the standout hit on the newsstands in 2010 for both monthly and weekly magazines. From Vanity Fair to Rolling Stone to Elle, many publications reported best-selling issues of 2010 when Gaga featured on their covers.

The reasons are not that difficult to understand. Her bizarre and outlandish costumes, right from her meat-laden appearance at the MTV awards to her latest bare-bottom showing in Paris on New Year’s eve, everything has stop and stare value. Cosmopolitan's April issue featuring Gaga sold 1.7 million copies, making it the magazine's best seller, and her Rolling Stone cover moved 245,000 copies, three times of the magazine’s average newsstand sales.

Vanity Fair's Gaga cover was their second highest seller of the year, selling 450,000 copies. She still could not beat Angelina Jolie who was the highest selling.

Gaga on Elle in January was the magazine's third best-seller of the year through October.

While Rihanna’s covers also seem to do well on the newsstands, for Taylor Swift, however, the news is not too good. It seems she generates the least interest on the covers. Her music albums do very well but her face does not seem to generate any excitement, likely due to her outfits and her run-of–the-mill publicity. Even though her outings with her beau Jake Gyllanhaal does stir some excitement, it is not enough to sell magazines.

After Taylor Swift became the cover girl of the Elle magazine, the sales reportedly dropped by 60,000 copies. Other magazines like Glamour and Marie Claire, also witnessed a drop in sales when Taylor Swift was on the cover page.

Lady Gaga