Zinio – Digi Mags

DIGITAL MAGAZINES

This post is aimed at those who like saving money, keeping things tidy, being eco-friendly and who like magazines. So that’s quite a few people hopefully, and what I’m referring to is the Zinio website which is the “world’s largest newsstand with thousands of the world’s best magazines in digital form.” It’s been around for a long time, about 10 years I think in various guises, so some of you will have no doubt of heard of it.

It came to my attention when my sister bought an iPad back from New York, as you know iPads are a little overpriced so she got a great deal in the States and took advantage. I set it up for her and a web search on the best apps for iPad brought up the Zinio app. After checking out the website and downloading the app the first thing I did, being a petrol head & autoslag, was go for the Automotive section looking for UK mags like Banzai, Fast Car and Japanese Performance Mag. Unfortunately there weren’t any of the UK jap mags available so I looked up the US mags Super Street & Import Tuner (Although I already subscribed to the hard copy of Import Tuner).

It was a pleasant surprise to find that both were available, the best thing though, was that they were only about £9.00 including VAT for a 12 month subscription each. They were available on multi-platform subscription so you could read them on your PC, MAC, iPhone or iPad. I immediately subscribed to Super Street and have been enjoying it ever since, it’s especially good on the iPad but that’s just me being a geek!

There is a very large library but there are a few notable mags missing. Some of the prices are so cheap you may just end up subscribing to a few too many mags. That said the larger publications such as Top Gear are still £30+ for 12 issues, but a lot of foreign material and lesser known magazines can be had at very reasonable prices. For instance UK subscriptions of Import Tuner & Super Street are at time of writing £7.01 excluding VAT, which is actually amazing for a 12 month subscription; I think it works out at around 70p an issue! It’s nice to find a bargain nowadays, and the fact that most digital mag downloads are multi-platform is great, although there is a iPad/iPhone bias, you can get them on your computer, Mac or PC.
Some of the features on iPad aren’t present on PC/MAC, and you can’t save the photos which is annoying, but you can’t do that with a real mag either I suppose.

The Video shows the text function available on iPad (& iPhone) which makes it easier to read an article showing it in plain text rather than actual magazine format, but this isn’t available on PC/MAC. And I’m not sure if this will work but if you go to the American zinio site via the tab in the top right corner the prices come up in dollars so it may be possible to buy in dollars and get further discount via the exchange rate, for UK peeps that is, like I said I’m not sure about this so no promises, but give it a shot.

So all you need to do is go on zinio.com, sign up, download the reader, spend a few quids and enjoy! ZINIO.COM

Alvin.