An international subscription, that is! All of you lucky Dutch readers can just subscribe online to one of their many cut-price deals with great freebies (a decent Toyota sewing machine with a year’s subscription, nice!).
I’ve been buying individual copies of the Dutch pattern magazine KnipMode for several years now, and I finally got the funds together to get a subscription for myself, just as the euro/pound exchange rate was at its lowest for ages. I started the process at the very end of May, and look what arrived in my postbox on Saturday (3 July)… the August issue! Yayyy!
There have been quite a few people asking how they can subscribe (I think after getting a taste of the magazine during Naaipatronen‘s 3-for-2 sale! Seriously, way to go, guys, we totally cleared out their back issues!), so I thought I’d sum up the process here for anyone outside the Netherlands that would like to subscribe. Please note that the prices vary with time and postal rates, so always get your own quote!
Subscribing to KnipMode outside The Netherlands
As far as I know, there are no resellers or international distributors for KnipMode (or Knippie, their bi-monthly childrens pattern magazine), so you have to subscribe directly with the publishers.
Email ServiceTeam@sanoma-uitgevers.nl and say you’d like to subscribe to KnipMode with [your country] delivery. They’ll email you back (it may take a few days, they can be a bit slow to respond to emails) with a list of conditions:
- Subscribers abroad commit themselves for a year.
- The payment of the subscription is needed in advance.
- The subscription will end automatically. Six weeks before the end of the subscription you will receive a request of payment for a renewal.
- Shipping will take about two weeks, depending on the country you live in. We cannot give any guarantees concerning delivery at your location.
The subscription fee (prices subject to alteration) is 105,72€ a year. Knipmode is a monthly magazine. It is sent by airmail in an envelope.
[that’s the UK-delivery price I was quoted – the US was somewhere around 120€ I believe.]
If you agree, then they’ll send you an invoice. This is where we got our wires crossed, because I assumed it was 1) agree to terms 2) get invoice 3) pay invoice 4) get first magazine, so I rang them up when I didn’t get an invoice and faxed them my long address and my card details, then rang again to make sure they got it okay. And slowly, it dawned on me that the process is actually 1) agree to terms 2) get first magazine 3) get invoice 4) pay invoice.
And indeed, I received an invoice in the post at the beginning of July, right around the same time my first issue turned up! The invoice has your subscriber number, address, and amount owed, and there’s a form to fill out and post back if you’d like to pay by credit card (or you can ring up the service team and pay by card over the phone – it’s just easier if you have your subscriber number from the invoice first!).
If you need it, their phone number is 0031 (0) 23 556 6901 and the fax number is 0031-23- 5566370. All the ladies I spoke to there spoke excellent English and were very helpful indeed!
So to clarify – they start your subscription process when you agree to their terms. They get your details together, give you a subscriber number, etc etc, and then they send you an invoice around the time of your first issue (they can tell you when your first issue should arrive if you ask). They do NOT wait until they are paid to start the process rolling, like is standard in the US and UK. So just because you haven’t had the invoice yet doesn’t mean you’re losing all this time… Be patient.
(A roundup of the June, July, and August issues will be coming as soon as I can catch my breath…)