As always, there is one thing that you tend to forget - that people die, Rounding off and making it easy, one per cent of a given population die during a year. Some years ago, the WT stated one per cent were df'ed during a year, and one per cent "quit". Three per cent in all. Just for the sake of calculation, we can use that number. So of the 8.7 or something million publishers, some 250,000 "die or quit" during a year. If you therefore have a 0 per cent growth, that "in reality" means a 3 per cent growth, because you have substituted those who left with new ones. So a growth of 110,000 or 1.3 per cent "in reality" is a growth of 360,000 new ones or 4.3 per cent. Not bad.
Just saying. So don't forget the "die or quit" group. Slimboy has shown by means of The Church of Scotland what the figures would have been like without this substitution.