Alphabet Soup – the Magazine

Alphabet Soup – a magazine for 6-12 year olds

Today my visitor is Rebecca Newman, publisher of ‘Alphabet Soup’ a magazine for 6-12 year old readers.

I was interested to learn about the magazine and it’s genesis.

1. Is Alphabet Soup Magazine available both online and in print?

Alphabet Soup is currently only available as a printed version. (There is a sample copy of the magazine on our website though. So you can see inside an issue.)

Occasionally we will offer snippets from the magazine online as well. We currently have our Q&A – with author Mark Greenwood – on our blog (www.soupblog.wordpress.com). In the magazine we print our author interviews over a double page spread, and we have to edit the answers down to fit the space available. Mark’s answers were so interesting that we decided to post the full interview on the blog, so you can read all the extra stuff there!

2. How do you promote the magazine?

We’ve walked a fair few kilometres putting flyers in letterboxes, but our best promotional tool so far has been word-of-mouth recommendations (thanks everyone!)

Other promotional tools:

Blog Tour

This interview is part of Alphabet Soup’s first Blog Tour, which is very exciting!

Review copies

We send copies out to reviewers and have had reviews on a number of websites: Aussie Reviews, The Book Chook and Busy Mothers.

Promo copies

We send a number of promotional copies of each issue to Australian schools and libraries, medical waiting-rooms etc.

Radio

I’ve been interviewed on Radio 720 in Perth (very nervous I was too, but Geraldine Mellett was a fantastic interviewer!).

Social networking

We have a blog, a facebook page, and we’re on twitter. So if the magazine is reviewed somewhere, or we have news, book reviews, or details of kids’ writing competitions around Australia, all that will go up on those sites.

3. Who is your main readership?

Alphabet Soup is aimed at children aged 6 to 12. The bulk of our subscribers are families with children around ages 9 to 10.

4. How is it available to readers? i.e. Where can they get it?

You can subscribe (and purchase single copies) online from the ‘subscribe’ page of the website. (Paying by credit card online, or downloading an order form to post with a cheque or money order.) The website also lists prices for delivery to overseas addresses.

We offer special rates for Australian libraries and schools who wish to subscribe.

In Western Australia, single copies of the magazine of the current issue are currently available through Westbooks (Victoria Park) and Zero to Ten (South Fremantle). We are in discussion with stockists in other states.

5. What are you offering that you felt wasn’t available elsewhere?

When I was growing up, our family joined the Puffin Club (run by Penguin). Membership included a quarterly magazine, Puffinalia, with book reviews, writing competitions and author profiles. We read every issue cover to cover!

Now I have a daughter who is an avid reader, and I thought of subscribing to Puffinalia for her as a birthday present – but discovered it was no longer available, and there wasn’t anything similar published in Australia. There were several magazines publishing solely children’s writing, but nothing like the old Puffinalia, which had a blend of quality adult-written material, children’s writing, and extras like interviews with children’s authors and illustrators, and writing competitions.

So Alphabet Soup was born. We aimed to publish a magazine for children (and their parents) who may not be interested in what the commercial ‘tween’ magazines are offering.

In a typical issue you’ll find:

• Q&A with a children’s author
• Interest article (in this issue we talk about backyard gardening)
• Stories, poems and book reviews by adults for children
• Stories, poems and book reviews by children
• Writing competition for kids
• Crossword or word puzzle
• Writing tips for kids

6. What is the best part of producing a magazine?

Well, the best part about producing this magazine would be reading through all the submissions for the ‘Write On!’ section (stories, poems and book reviews by children).

Kids are writing some fabulous stuff, and they get a real thrill out of seeing their writing in print. One parent wrote to me and said that the day their first issue arrived, her daughters had played publishers all afternoon and made their own magazine in the style of Alphabet Soup. I love hearing stories like that!

I also love meeting the amazing people who work with children’s books – authors, illustrators, booksellers, publishers – so far everyone I have approached has been delightful. There must be something about people who work in the children’s book industry!

7. What is the biggest challenge?

Marketing is definitely our biggest challenge! As Alphabet Soup is a small home-based business, we don’t have a huge marketing budget. Luckily we weren’t in a screaming hurry, and planned to take things slowly for the first year or two. So we’re marching on, and the feedback has been very positive and encouraging!

It’s been great visiting Let’s Have Words. Thanks for having me around!

Rebecca

Here are some Alphabet Soup links:

Alphabet Soup website: www.alphabetsoup.net.au

Alphabet Soup blog: www.soupblog.wordpress.com

Twitter: www.twitter.com/alphabetsoupmag

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=1098133106

Other stops on this tour:

1 September Dale Harcombe (Write and Read With Dale) http://www.livejournal.com/users/orangedale
2 September Sally Murphy (Sally Murphy’s Writing for Children Blog) http://sallymurphy.blogspot.com
3 September Claire Saxby (Let’s Have Words) http://www.letshavewords.blogspot.com/
4 September Mabel Kaplan (Tales I Tell) http://belka37.blogspot.com
5 September Dee White (Teachers Writing Helper) www.teacherswritinghelper.wordpress.com
6 September Robyn Opie (Writing Children’s Books) http://www.robynopie.blogspot.com
7 September Sandy Fussell (Stories Are Light) www.sandyfussell.blogspot.com

Which book will I choose to read next?

My idea of hell has two parts. One is to be somewhere without a pen and paper. It seldom happens, but I still have nightmares about how I’ll capture that phrase, that idea. The other is to be somewhere, even at home, with no book to read.  My bedside table always includes a tower of books. I’m not sure it’s ever been empty. There are old books that I always wanted to read, books I want to reread and then new books.

Childhood Books

At dinner at a friend’s home, conversation flowed from one subject to another, and often back again. We discussed the changing position of Cerberus, a ship in the bay (which was put there as a breakwater ), the various merits of boarding schools, early Melbourne township, town planning consultants, schools vs education and myriad other things. We also discussed favourite childhood books. Not strange conversation for me, but less usual for others of our company.

There were discussions about how rereading of a favourite childhood book had shown just much books for children have changed. (The consensus was that quality is generally much better now). We also talked about titles that went in and out of favour (Little Black Sambo, Noddy and Big Ears). I hadn’t known that the song ‘Alexander Beetle’, sung by Melanie, was actually commissioned to bring one of A A Milne’s poems to music. A 20 year old male talked about ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’ as a favourite. We talked about overt moral lessons in books and whether that was a good thing. Views on that ranged widely.

I’ve recently sorted through my children’s bookshelves. Some books went to the op shop, some into my bookshelves. Each of my children had different favourites, even though they don’t remember all of them. I wonder if the ones I kept are the ones they remember, or the ones that I remember they liked, or the ones I liked. Which of these books would my sons recommend now?

I came home determined to reread novels of my childhood and see how they stand the test of time.

Some of my Childhood Books

January is one of my favourite times to read. I manage to finally make it to the bottom of the pile of books by my bed and the pile by my computer. One Janiuary I decided it was time to catch up on a couple of childhood favourite books I wanted to reread. I moved around a lot as a child, including moving to PNG when I was 10. There wasn’t room to take all my toys and books and many of them disappeared but having grown out of many of them, I hardly noticed. But many years later, as an adult I discovered that my books hadn’t actually been ‘disappeared’ but given to my cousin whose three daughters had read them. Her girls were done with them, so some of my favourites came home again. There were Russian Folk Tales, Tales from Eastern Lands, a bumper collection of fairy tales and a few novels. One of the books that didn’t come back was Johanna Spyri’s ‘Heidi’ although one of the sequels did.
So yesterday I went to the library and borrowed ‘Heidi’ and ‘Pippi Longstocking’ (the latter I’d never read, or didn’t recall). ‘Heidi’ I enjoyed as much as I did as a child. I was amazed to discover that it was written in 1880 (!!) and translated from the original German a few years later. ‘Pippi Longstocking’ I enjoyed too for all the humour and offbeat happenings.

Do I finish every book?

I used to finish every book I started, even if it was a struggle. Not any more. There are just too many books to read. Although there are exceptions. I did persevere with ‘Life of Pi’ by Yann Martel, although finding the beginning chapters very dense and less than riveting. They were interesting, but I really couldn’t work out where they were heading. I’m glad I did keep going though. The ending stayed with me for a long time.

A Range of Books

Now I’m back to broader, more recent books. I’ve got ‘Requiem for a Beast’ and ‘Flavours of Melbourne’. The former caused controversy after recognition in the 2008 CBCA Awards, and the latter is a food history of Melbourne. I’m looking forward to reading about what was eaten in the 1850s Melbourne.

From Libraries and Bookshops

I love the library. I read too much to be able to support my habit without these wonderful places. I do buy books too, particularly Australian children’s books. I’m a big fan of fiction mostly, although I’m growing to enjoy non fiction more and more. Non fiction is seldom bedtime reading for me though.

I like Titles

What makes someone pick up a new book in a bookshop? Why that one? Is it the colour of the cover or the size or where it’s sitting on the shelf? Is it the title?

I like titles. I’ve reviewed ‘What Willow Knew’ by June Colbert. For me, that’s a title! It immediately had me wondering what it was that Willow knew, and why it mattered.

I wonder when in the book-creation process this title came – whether it was the title that generated the story or whether the title was a afterwards thing. Was it agonising to find this fitting title or a natural thing that birthed easily? Willow is not the main character in this mystery, but she colours all that happens. I enjoyed the story, finding it difficult to put down.

For me when I write , sometimes the title come first, sometimes in the middle of writing and sometimes not until after the story is well-finished. If they work as well as this one does, then that’s a fine thing.

I love that I can call reading work. Whether it’s keeping up with what’s being published, reading to review or for research, reading is a wonderful thing.