I write weird, slightly depressing fiction and work at a public library.
This means I like to stay informed of what’s going on in the book world. But it also means I’m broke.
Thankfully, the Library has what I need, and I don’t even have to leave my house.
Through Zinio, our provider of digital magazines, I can download the latest issues of the following titles, without waiting, and without the need to worry about a due date, because the checkouts never expire.*
- Poets & Writers
- The Writer
- The New Yorker (the fiction is usually horrible, but I feel compelled to read it anyway)
- The New York Review of Books
- 300+ other titles, one of which will probably interest you.
So when it’s May and I’m still in the middle of the January/February issue of Poets & Writers, I can take my time to savor the writerly goodness without fear of late fees or the sorcery whereby ebooks disappear from your account before you are ready to let them go.
Zinio also helped me do research for a short story I wrote. I needed to read various trendy women’s magazines, like:
- Cosmopolitan (also available in Spanish!)
- Elle
- Marie Claire
- Vogue
Seriously, it’s a little painful to even include this image.
The problem is I am embarrassed to be seen with any of these titles. It would tarnish my weird-depressing-fiction-writer street cred. So I checked them out with Zinio and read them on my computer and my phone (because yes, Zinio has a free phone app). My reputation remained intact, and I wrote a story I’m proud of (though I’m still revising it, so I haven’t sent it out for publication yet).
I used to feel compelled to read magazines cover-to-cover or not at all, but I’ve given myself permission to skip the articles that bore me. Life’s too short, n’at. This has been freeing, because I like a lot of magazines, and most of them are available through Zinio.
(Ones that are not available digitally, but that you can still access in print through the Library, include:
*You have to create an account with Zinio, and then any magazine you check out remains in your Zinio Library until you delete it. Our digital collection has issues going back to 2013.
**There are back issues of PW available on Zinio, but no current ones.
What magazines do you read? Let us know in the comments!
-Kelly
Eleventh Stack 