Discovering independent magazines across the UK

A year ago, we started an experiment. We’d been supplying a small theatre with our magazines for a few months, and after finally visiting and seeing the space, I decided that we should find a way of sending more independent magazines to more independent venues across the UK. We’re now sending our magazines to almost 200 venues, and we want to do more, so if you run an independent cafe in the UK and you think our magazines would work in your space, fill in this form and we’ll add you to our mailing list.

The magazines are free, and all we ask is that you add one of our stickers to the covers as they arrive, so people can see the magazines came from Stack. It makes loads of sense that great independent venues should have great independent magazines in them, and of course we hope that if people enjoy our magazines enough times while they’re out and about, they might decide to subscribe for themselves one day. We’ve had brilliant feedback from the venues that already receive our magazines, and I love receiving emails from people who stumbled across us in their favourite places.

But of course this was all conceived as an experiment, and we’ve learned along the way, so we’re making a few changes in this next phase:

First of all, the idea came out of visiting a theatre, and we expected that we’d get the best response from arts venues. I’m not sure why we thought that – maybe because we assumed that people who are out doing an arty, creative thing might be more receptive to discovering our independent magazines? But actually the best responses have come from cafes – they seem to have more space for displaying the magazines, and they have lots of people who want something good to read while they drink their coffee. So we’re leaning into the cafes – if you work in a cafe and you could make use of our magazines, please fill in the form! If you run an independent gallery, theatre, cinema, or other arts space, please email me and tell me why you think the magazines would work well in your place.

Secondly, when we put the call out for responses last time we wanted to keep it as open as possible, so as well as asking venues to sign up, we also asked people to recommend their favourite independent spaces. But that proved problematic – we need venues where somebody is going to take care of the magazines and add our stickers to the covers, and we found that’s just much easier when somebody from the venue itself has responded. So this time, we’re only looking for responses from people who actually work in the cafes where the magazines will be displayed. (If you have a favourite independent cafe, please show them this post and tell them that they should fill in the form!)

As before, we’re only able to offer this within the UK – I’m afraid the cost of sending magazines overseas is just too much for us to cover. And as before, this is very much still an experiment! If you have any ideas for ways we could improve the project, or other suggestions for things we could do to put our magazines in front of more people, please drop me a line and let me know – I’d love to hear from you.

Fill in our form to receive free magazines from Stack