Letter Mag

Once, not so long ago, there was a time when a free paper magazine was on the market. Unfortunerely, like all good things that are for free, eventually they simply cease to exist. Why? My best bet is that the management wasn't able to sustain the magazine due to financial reasons, since we are more than well aware of the fact that the interest for such media is huge.

The magazine that I have is issue 2 from 2007. Here is the cover:

As you can see, it is made by the Deutsche Post and was available for free for quite some time. The whole magazine is bilingual, which means that the articles are written in both German and English. It was a wonderful source of new ideas and topics to discuss. On the other hand, you could practice your German/English while learning about new things. The articles inside the issues were pretty diverse - there were of course some penpalling articles like "Tips for writing letters abroad":

 But also there were pretty diverse topics discussed in the issue that have little to do with penpalling or correspondence. For example, in this very same issue there is an article about the Climate change:

 and about Live Earth - Rock in the greenhouse:

 In conclusion, the magazine was pretty interesting in its topics and as well as the upside of being paper and free, delivered right to your doorstep. It could only get better than this, if the magazine actually made it through to nowadays. But you can't ask for everything, right?

PenPal Connection Paper Magazine:

Welcome to yet another review of Pen Pal Media. This time we are going to take a look at a paper magazine, called Pen Pal Connections (by Dawn Thomas).

Here's some information about the magazine:

"The Pen Pal Connection is a group for people who love to snail mail pen pal. We share pen pal stories, the pen pal experience, tips on letter writing, organizing your pen pals, pals looking for more pen pals & much more.
The Pen Pal Connection is a quarterly published magazine. In this group we can also submit articles and stories for publication, receive magazine updates, announcements & much more.
The Pen Pal Connection is $5.00 for a sample copy USA only ($6.00 US funds only for International orders)
One year subscription $18.00 (4 issues) (One year for International orders $25.00 US Funds only)"

So my opinion about the Pen Pal Connection Paper Magazine:

Subscription: Easy - just get in touch with the team!

Magazine type: Paid, paper magazine, issued quarterly. You can pretty much make the conclusions yourself - advantages: paper (yeah!), disadvantages - you have to pay for the issues. Shipping is included. Keep in mind that each issue is 28 to 32 pages long. Guess that it comes pricey to run a paper magazine! Payment: Checks or Money orders. That makes it hard to get from outside the US. However, you can contact the owner and see if other payment options are available.

Information wise: It includes articles and Ads - quite well maintained.

Ads from Pen Pals: Good job presenting the pen pals!

Design: You can get a feeling of the magazine's design from the photos that I have included. Sadly, they have not released officially other photos and I can't upload you photos from inside the magazine as they are their property. Hope it makes sense. But overall you can get a general idea of the magazine's design from its cover.

Join their yahoo group at: Y! Group: PenPalConnections.

Connect with them via Facebook: PenPal Connections on Facebook