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More than ten million newspapers have been sold across the UK today.

I can't know that, of course - it's merely a reliable guess.

But the industry is close to the Sunday total falling through that level, as daily papers have already done.

Ten million sales still represents a lot of paper, to be sure, but the rate of decline in sales isn't letting up. And some Sunday papers are showing the pressure.

For the Sunday Herald - based in Glasgow, with the smallest circulation of any title classified as 'national' - the latest industry circulation figures are particularly alarming.

It relaunched in January, and saw a couple of weeks of healthy sales as customers tried out a single-section magazine design.

But those customers have fallen away fast. Its February sales were 23% down on February last year, at only 33,000.

Why? My hunch is that a Sunday paper that can't be separated over the brunch table (particularly the sports section) is much less attractive to readers and less conducive to household harmony.

Spat sparked

The sharp fall has sparked a spat between the Sunday Herald's editor, Richard Walker, and the group editor at The Scotsman/Scotland on Sunday in Edinburgh.

Richard Walker laments the impact of Scotland on Sunday marketing aggressively, with reduced price in the west of Scotland, to exploit the Sunday Herald's weakness.

He points out the result could be that the overall indigenous Scottish press will be the victim of such tactics.

John McLellan at SoS responds that's pretty rich coming from a Glasgow paper that lowered its price to non-viable levels for much of last year. You can read more about it at the website.

They're both right, but the tenor of the spat suggests that The Scotsman group, owned by Johnston Press, scents blood from its rival, and has no qualms about trying to kill it off.

Cost-cutting cycles

But the Sunday Herald isn't the only one crashing through previously unthinkable circulation thresholds.

With the once-mighty Daily Record now selling below 300,000 in Scotland, the February figures show The Herald just above 50,000, and The Scotsman just above 40,000. Scotland on Sunday has sales north of the border of 53,000 - holding up better than the industry average.

Its other rival, the Sunday Times, has fallen through the 60,000 sales barrier since it ditched much of its Scottish content in one of the industry's relentless cycles of cost-cutting - though its Scottish decline has not been far off that of UK sales.

The most recent figures for the 'non-national' titles issued last month (they're only issued every six months) show The Courier down by more than 4% in a year to 63,000, and the Press and Journal down 3.5% at 73,000 for the second half of last year.

At 54,000 average daily sales, the Glasgow Evening Times continued to lose readers faster than other evening papers, with the Dundee Telegraph a rare case of putting on sales - up a few hundred to 23,000.

Most vulnerable

Johnston Press, owner of the Scotsman group, this week reported full-year financial figures with advertising revenue falling much faster than circulation, and accelerated by the cuts in government spending on ad space. So the newspaper nightmare goes on.

But for those fearing they look most vulnerable, one small beacon of hope comes from The Independent. It sells fewer than 200,000 copies across the UK, and fewer than 8,000 of them in Scotland.

But its fall in the past year has been much slower than its better-resourced competitors. And in Scotland, the daily and Sunday has actually put on (a few) sales.