What made you want to work in publishing?

I've wanted to work in publishing ever since I was young. I always loved reading and would have loved to be a writer because to write the stories that I loved was the ultimate dream to me as a kid. Then I discovered journalism was a possible career path in high school and I was lucky enough to have teachers that supported and encouraged me in my interest. I never lost this interest during my undergraduate course, and obviously not during my masters in Publishing. Writing and telling stories have been something that I have always loved; all journalism and publishing is storytelling, and that’s where my passion lies.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

During high school I did a couple of work experiences at different magazines and even at Glasgow City Council’s Media Office. I studied English and Legal Studies at the University of Aberdeen, and was heavily involved in the Dance Society, Glee Club and The Gaudie student newspaper. I then went on to do an MSc in Publishing at Edinburgh Napier University and then went to the Beano comic where I have been for over two years now. My role has evolved from an Editorial Assistant to a Content Producer. In 2020, I won a Rising Star Award (formally known as the Print Futures Awards) which funded editorial and marketing training courses as well as a membership for the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders where I am now an Intermediate Level member. I’m very passionate about the publishing industry and supporting publishing hopefuls trying to get into the industry, so I became a Co-Chair of the Society of Young Publishers Scotland for 2021/22.

The Beano has been shortlisted for two of our new categories at the PPA Awards: Children’s Magazine of the Year and Subscriptions Strategy of the Year. What have you been doing over lockdown to support children?

Beano supported kids through lockdown with lots of initiatives, and I may miss some because I wasn’t involved with them. But we did provide reprint pages from the archives for the Courier (one of DC Thomson’s local Dundee newspapers) for their daily Children’s Corner for kids to have more things to do in lockdown. We also produced six Golden Beanos which are completely free and available to download as a PDF to give kids more LOLs during lockdown. All these pages were handpicked stories, jokes and puzzles from our archive too – being a weekly comic for 83 years means that our archive is a massive resource tool for these kinds of initiatives! Our team in London also worked with Save the Children to help make children’s birthdays in lockdown just as awesome as those not spent in lockdown with their Beano Lockdown Birthday Bash kits – the money raised from the packs went to Save the Children. In the comic, we created a series of original stories with Young Minds, a children’s mental health charity, to help children look after their mental health during the pandemic – especially wearing masks, social distancing, and worrying about the world opening up more. But I think the main thing we did to support children was to keep the comic going and give kids a place to live vicariously through their favourite characters when their own lives were so curtailed by restrictions.

What was the response to your campaign, Britain’s Funniest Family?

This was our second year of running this kind of campaign but due to lockdown and kids spending more time at home with their families, we decided to make it Britain’s Funniest Family. With popular funny family-man, Romesh Ranganathan on board as head-judge, the response was an incredibly positive one with so many families sending in their videos, and then millions voting for their favourite! Our aim (working with Young Minds) was to help lift people’s spirits throughout lockdown through laughter and fun, which would hopefully decrease the levels of anxiety too. We’ve run the third iteration of this campaign again this year with Britain’s Funniest Class – the shortlist was just announced and you can vote here.

Can you briefly explain how your subscriptions strategy was approached over the last year and how it has been successful?

Because we were in lockdown and non-essential shops were closed, our emphasis lay in encouraging people to get a subscription to get Beano delivered to their door, with lots of deals for new subscribers who now couldn’t always get it from the shops. As a result of the great subscriber offers, we now have more subscribers than newsstand readers, which when combined means we are reaching over 45,000 children a week. Within the content of the comic, we complemented this by increasing the activity pages we had in the comic to give kids more to do – helping to beat lockdown boredom for longer. So more colouring in pages, more crafts and experiments, more board games, more word-searches – you name it, we had it in! Over the summer and autumn, we also had exclusive subscriber-only competitions and activities on the paper wrap that we send the comic in, which makes our subscribers feel even more special.

How is The Beano’s content of 2021 different to the content of 2020?

When the pandemic hit, our main aim was to continue to get the comic out as normal – it was Beano as usual at Beano Towers. While we were careful to stay away from stories about colds and flus, we didn’t want to change the content of the comic too much as we believed that we should keep Beano a safe space for our readers where they could escape the anxieties of the world and just enjoy their favourite characters. Laughter and keeping people’s spirits up was important, and that is still what we are concentrating on today. So I don’t believe the content has changed that much between 2020 and 2021. However, we have introduced some new characters into Beanotown – the Chandra family, who own the joke shop, and have brought back our favourite detective, Angel Face. We update our roster of characters very regularly to make sure that we are reflecting the reality of our readers today, both in the stories that we tell and in the characters we use.

What’s on your radar?

I think one of the things that I think about is the change in emphasis that I’m seeing from newsstand to subscription-based magazine business models. It changes the content that is being produced and can be more carefully curated to the readership rather than necessarily being about shock factor or based on ‘big names’. This is a trend that I saw before the pandemic, but it has been accelerated because of it – almost every young person I know just buys everything online, so are spending less time on the high street. But it’s not a bad thing – being able to properly curate and specialise your content to your readers will make for a better reader experience. The pivoting and innovation that happened during lockdown needs to continue for more magazines to continue to survive. But there will be some rather amazing magazines that can’t survive without a newsstand, and that makes me sad.

What magazine would you stockpile?

That is such a hard question! I have a top two for different reasons (not including Beano) – Dancing Times and Somewhere: For Us. I have danced since I was five so obviously Dancing Times is for me. I get so excited every time it comes through my door. I made a #MyFavouriteMagazine video for the International Magazine Centre all about why I love this magazine – and it even got a comment from the editor itself (fan-girl screams!), but the nicest thing was that my dance teacher spoke to me about how she loved getting her issue of Dancing Times when she was training in London. It brings people together through their love of dance. My second one is Somewhere: for us, a Scottish indie magazine for the LGBTQ+ community in Scotland (and beyond). Beano Studios did a collaboration on their Issue 2 cover, and I just had to have a copy. I am an ally to the LGBTQ+ community (or I try to be – I’m always learning) and I just love reading this magazine and learning more about the community. And it goes beyond a magazine, you can buy prints, postcards, badges – they even run a set of awards! And if you become a member, 20% of your membership goes towards their new LGBTQ+ funding scheme – Funding for You.