Yes, yes, it is a gift that lasts all year.

It has been ages since we went back to basics on our marketing here at Newsstand (quiet at the back, please). Our concentration has been focused squarely at the development of our service to both customers and publishers over the last year or so. So now, stepping back, it might be worth jotting down the benefits of a good old magazine subscription as a gift.

Firstly, we would all love an antidote to the "opened before lunch and broken by tea" gift situation. It's wasteful and although it provides a rush of excitement, its a tenable situation neither for the recipient nor the giver....

A magazine subscription, on the other hand, is effectively indestructible and will last as long as you want it to...here at Newsstand you can choose subscription lengths from a single copy right up to one or two years' worth. They'll be reminded of your generosity long after pine needles are found in turkey sandwiches, not once, but 2, 5, 8 or 12 times!

Also, the sheer breadth of choice we have (the largest range online), means that you can broaden someone's horizons with a magazine that they hadn't even known existed, on a topic that you know they enjoy. Overseas magazines are especially useful for this, but we also have a large range of high quality independent publications - very often with free post within the UK.

Yes, we do gift cards, but where we really excel is with our Gift Credit offer. This can be viewed as a simple voucher for use at Newsstand. However, when you consider it against a subscription to one magazine for a year, it comes into its own.

The recipient can use the credit against any one of 3,500 magazines from around the world - a copy of this and a short subscription to that - it is totally up to them. They can even receive alerts for every new issue of their favourites and decide which ones to have delivered and which ones to leave.

For you, it is a simple process and we'll send the voucher on, either to you or the lucky person.

Heartfelt sales pitch over, all of us at Newsstand wish customers and everyone else a wonderful Christmas and/or holiday season.