Shereen Low
BAUER MEDIA – WEEKLY WOMEN’S MAGAZINES & CRIME MONTHLY
- Works on the women’s weekly mags (Bella, Yours, Grazia, Closer & Heat)
- Also works on Crime Monthly
- Loves interviews with authors, especially celeb
- True life / real-life crime always of interest
- Interested in authors who write about Royals
- Grazia very female focused – strong women, survivors, gripping personal stories etc
- Shereen works across a lot of the interview features
- They are happy to repurpose pieces across different Bauer mags and online
- No longer have separate teams for each magazine, one big team trying to write across everything
- Looking for relevant authors / celebs for each mag – Bella and Yours (e.g. Carol Kirkwood) have slightly older demographic compared to Heat (e.g. Love Island contestants)
- Closer is slightly more varied in what works (authors and reality stars)
- Happy to syndicate interviews across magazines unless stipulated by publicist
- Grazia is fortnightly
- Ideal is for them to know about things a month in advance
- Can turn things around in about a week
- Bella goes to print on Wednesday’s, all others go to print on Friday
- Shereen happy to pass on real life stories to the correct contact
Ella Dove
WOMAN&HOME / WOMAN’S WEEKLY
- Does cover some of the other women’s weekly mags, e.g. Woman’s Own & Woman
- Only been in the job for a month
- W&H readership is midlife women, 40+, monthly mag, UK based authors are preferable
- Ella works across a broad range of features – not celebrities, this will go through Zoe West (books editor for Woman&Home)
- For Ella, it’s much more about authors who are not celebs. Authors who have amazing personal stories.
- They don’t like stories on how authors have written their book
- Stories do not have to be connected an author’s book
- Love personal stories
- Real life memoir slots available
- Topical, zeitgeist non-fiction books always welcome
- She doesn’t cover Health & Wellbeing (Faye Smith)
- Ella will cover Self Help / books by psychologists
- Always looking for funny writers. Funny features will bring lightness to the magazine, can be quirky & random
- Reports – what’s in the press that is evergreen, does it stand the test of time
- At the end of July, they will be planning Christmas issue
- Ella also covers finance now, especially for women aged 40+. Always looking for financial experts
- Woman’s Weekly – have two specific slots. Readers are typically women 70+
- Celebrating Britain – uplifting stories, e.g. outdoor museums across UK, women who run family farms, outdoors, nature, 40+ women
- Good To Know – advice slot, can be very broad, e.g. airfryers, how to have fun on a microbudget. Open to fiction authors as well as non-fiction
- Woman’s Weekly goes to press on a Tuesday. Plan in batches, planning mid Nov through till Christmas in mid-July
- W&H goes to press 2nd or 3rd week of the month. 26th July will see them planning Christmas
- Ella can be flexible on when to contact her, she has a features longlist where she parks ideas
- Do send Ella angles for features, how you see it working for W&H. Background info on author always useful – family setup, where are they based, author picture etc
- There’s a digital team, completely separate to Ella who is only on print. Unlikely that magazine feature pieces will end up online
- W&H online readership is more targeted to bringing in the US
- Woman’s Own & Woman – for real life stories go via Bess Browning
Megan Conner
RED
- Acting features director, Natasha Lunn is on maternity leave currently
- Red Readers are in 30’s, 40’s & 50’s. Red Readers love self-growth pieces
- ‘Self’ section – Arielle Steele (mental health, nutrition, fitness)
- ‘Reads’ section – Bella Evennett-Watts
- Personal essays – written in the first person, sometimes they are extracts. Often based around memoirs, but they can do a piece with a fiction writer. Can run over 3 /4 pages.
- Expert driven pieces – careers, self-development, quite substantial pieces, 4 pages. May ghost in interview, or extract. Very closely tied to the book. Intro with the writer then broken down into interesting points from the book
- Visual feature – largely pictures, books with incredible images. A visual break so there’s not lots of copy for readers. Can give up to 6 pages
- Readers section – books section, every month they have an opener hooked to visual book, coffee table books. Books that are out that month. One page interview ‘my life in books’, 7 set questions, can be done over email. 1 page Q&A with author every month, works if they have a book out but there’s something extra they want to talk about.
- Guest speaker – 1 page guest column, no regular columnist, 650 words, to showcase voices. Literally can be about anything, not a huge amount of space for complex ideas. Light ideas work well here.
- Self-section – 18 to 20 pages, mind body and spirit. Substantial features in this section too. Each month they have 1 writer doing a 2-page memoir on a different aspect of mental health they’ve been impacted by. Coming to an end this year.
- Pitch to Megan via email
- Definitely include press releases for non-fiction books
- Pitch specific slots for fiction
- Confirming line up for November currently, have just put September to bed
- Print operate very separate to their online team. Francesca Rice is the editor for Red online. More short form content, not a lot of feature in the mag end up online
Other
- All 3 like catalogues as well as personal pitches
- All 3 like to meet in person but conscious of time, happy to do Zoom as middle ground
- Megan only in the office two days a week
- Megan is up for multiple publicists from across a publishing house to come to Red office
- Shereen only in office two days a week too
- Ella is not a huge fan of historical fiction
- In terms of physical proofs / copies:
- Ella – doesn’t like to be overwhelmed by physical books, prefers them being sent home, also open to PDF’s, keen for a mix and will ask for physical, check before
- Megan – doesn’t like to be overwhelmed by physical books, doesn’t mind them being sent home sometimes, also open to PDF’s, keen for a mix and will ask for physical, check before
- Shereen – loves a proof but again doesn’t want to be overrun, so will call in proofs if it’s someone she’s interviewing, not hugely keen on PDF’s
- Crime Monthly – July issue out today. Working on August issue now, pretty much all flat-planned. Looking for September ideas now
- UK or international authors
- Megan – open to international, if the story is good it doesn’t matter
- Ella – W&H are mostly UK based authors
- Shereen – predominantly UK, but again open to international authors. Crime will hill everyone everywhere
- Children’s writers
- Megan – big names work, have two celebrity profiles a month, so could work for that
- Ella – depends on what the story is, wouldn’t say no but would have to look at strength of the angle
- Shereen – more open to children’s writers if they are a celeb
- Features & interviews exclusivity, would they follow other mags / supps
- Megan – Red not too worried but wont feature someone that is everywhere, ultimately they just base it off what their Red reader wants, don’t mind being one of two outlets for example
- Ella – GH is W&H’s main competitor, Prima too, so they wouldn’t follow. Papers don’t worry them too much. Potential crossover with YOU magazine, will consider depending on what the story is
- Shereen – Bauer exclusives are often the way forward, can run across all their mags, Bella’s main competitor is Best
- Are they happy to run features / interviews beyond publication?
- All yes, especially if it’s a great story that hasn’t been done before
- Mags are very seasonal, e.g. exotic holidays would have to wait for Summer and couldn’t be done at Christmas
- Red have a small commissioning budget, they don’t pay a lot for extracts. They can offer lots of pages though. Same for W&H.