This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement. When it comes to glossy magazines, I'm something of a heavy consumer.
I've been a motoring journalist for most of my working life, so keeping on top of the latest automotive news is a big part of my day. I'm also a motorhome fanatic, and I love spending time on narrowboats, so magazines are a wonderful way of exploring those passions. I use magazines to learn more about the countryside, as I'm passionate about rural affairs.
I could sit for hours with a copy of BBC Countryfile magazine , and Farmers Guardian is one of my guilty pleasures. Did you know with an ad-lite subscription to Derry Journal, you get 70% fewer ads while viewing the news that matters to you. The trouble is, magazines are expensive.
Take the current crop of car magazines I'm hooked on, for example. A weekly copy of Auto Express costs £4.50, and I do like to thumb through Autocar , but that's £4.
75 per week. Top Gear Magazine has always been my monthly favourite, and that's £5.99.
I'd hate to stop reading the wonderful Evo magazine but that's £6.50 per month and that's before I occasionally treat myself to a copy of Octane, which is £5.99.
Motorhome magazines cost a similar amount, while the superb Waterways World is a fiver. Countryfile Magazine costs £5.99 and even Farmers Guardian sets me back £4.
10. And then I discovered a service called Readly. Every magazine I've mentioned above is uploaded to Readly and its users have full access to all of them, along with another 7,500 UK publications, including newspapers .
And, to read each one, to spend as long as you like thumbing through them on your phone, tablet, or computer , wherever you are in the world, you just have to pay a subscription fee. Readly charges £12.99 per month for full access to all these titles.
So if I'd bought a month's worth of Auto Express editions, one Top Gear, and four copies of the Sunday Telegraph , I'd have spent £36. Nearly three times the cost of a Readly subscription. Even if I'd taken up the very tempting offers of subscription deals from each of the publishers I would still be saving a small fortune by signing up to Readly .
And I'd get all the other mags I love with Readly as part of the package. It gets even better than that, though. Readly has offered National World readers a special offer with a reduced monthly rate and two months free.
For your first year of Readly membership you get a two-month free trial, then you pay a reduced rate of £11.69 for the first 10 months . And you can cancel any time.
Even disregarding the free two months, an average household that reads, say two monthly magazines and one newspaper per week would be quids in. And that's before all the other free copies of all the other publications on the platform are taken into account. Don't get me wrong, there's something lovely about picking up a printed magazine or newspaper.
Holding a glossy magazine in your hand, and having it on your coffee table ready to pick up during any idle moment, is always going to be a joy. But it's a privilege I've been finding it harder and harder to budget for, especially since discovering Readly. The Readly apps make it very easy to thumb through each title, with pinch-zoom functions , article selection, and quick-scrolling options.
It's less accomplished on a computer screen, but it works brilliantly on handheld devices. I must admit, it took a while to get used to loading up magazines on a tablet, rather than flicking through physical pages, but that's the beauty of the two-month free trial . If it doesn't work for you, just go back to printed media.
If anything, I've got a bit of an issue with content overload now. There's so much to go at on Readly that I could spend hours absorbing it all. But a consequence of this is I can now flick through magazines that cover topics I only have a fleeting interest in because I haven't paid the cover price , and I can afford to cherry-pick just a few articles relevant to me.
I no longer need to feel like I'm trying to get my money's worth. Switching to digital reading has been an interesting journey. As much as I miss printed media I do enjoy having more choice.
And I love not having to weigh up whether I can afford picking up that alluring copy of T3 magazine ahead of a train journey. I can just spend the money on a posh coffee instead, which is always a treat..
