Guest post by womagwriter Beatrice Charles

My guest today is Beatrice Charles, with a summary of why she finds a subscription to Readly a useful resource for her writing.

All submission guidelines say the same thing: "we recommend you read several issues of the magazine before submitting to us".

I used to buy regular issues of many different magazines. Before long I was knee deep in paper and several pounds lighter in my pocket. Digital subscriptions to the various magazines helped reduce the bulk but did little to reduce the cost. 

Then I won a month's free subscription to readly.com, found it a really useful resource and have continued with a paid subscription. It is a digital subscription service providing access to many and varied publications around the world.

Benefits of Readly:

I pay £7.99 per month for access to hundreds of magazines.

The cost allows five different people to access Readly at the same time and on different devices, so I can share this resource with my family.

Each user can compile a list of favourites - mine are the womags and other magazines which pay for readers' letters; my mother chooses household, knitting and cookery; my brother reads up about his hobbies of woodworking, clocks, etc; my niece parenting magazines. (Never realised my family is so stereotyped.)

Magazines from many different countries are available, which would be of more use if I were able to understand the language, but at least I can look at the illustrations in Allas and see who has been published there.

I can bookmark particular pages - narcissistic as I am I have marked my own published writing.

There is a search facility, which isn't always reliable, but helpful when I want to focus on one particular writer to research what it is about their style that makes them so successful with a particular publication. I also found a couple of my letters that had been published but had missed.

I can research a large number of non-fiction markets, as well as checking they haven't recently published something which I am seeking to pitch.

I can access back copies of magazines to when they began partnering Readly - WW and PF this was January 2014.

Once downloaded (up to 500 issues if your device has the memory capacity), they can be read anytime and anywhere. My brother found this useful on a recent 16 hour flight to Argentina.

Downsides to Readly:

It doesn't publish Take a Break Fiction Feast but it does include the TAB Specials which usually print a story or two, nor does it publish The Weekly News, Ireland's Own, or Woman's World (USA). It doesn't publish anything from Australia or South Africa. Readly claim that new editions are being added regularly so I do update my list from time to time.

The magazines don't earn as much through Readly as they will from direct sales, but they won't incur printing and distribution costs, and each time an issue is downloaded they will receive a payment.