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I like newsletters, I used to like newsletters before they were cool & now they're cool & there's heaps of them. Why Newsletters Are Cool A newsletter is a blog you email to people! Emails are nice and intimate, it's like getting a letter from a friend who you don't know and have a weird parasocial relationship with, it's a one-person podcast in words, I get LiveJournal vibes from newsletters! I was on LiveJournal at 16 years old and it shaped my life. Will newsletters do the same for Zoomers? Unlikely, but watch the Zoomers carefully nonetheless. Newsletter Platforms You can use MailChimp you can use Substack, Substack is really popular, apparently it paid famous bloggers to migrate to their platform & now Hot Take Machines have Substacks to serve their spicy goods. All these services are essentially websites that will take care of the mass-email-everyone part of the newsletter, host it, maybe hosts comments even. You can even host your own newsletter mail-out-errer on your super slick private server, if you want! I honestly have no idea which of the newsletter platforms is better. Please somebody smart tell me their individual merits!? Why on earth is everyone on Substack? Good Newsletters For book reading people, Bookbear Express is tender & wise, it is in fact the best newsletter Also for book reading people but more chaotic, Drei Cafe is a literature newsletter that started as an Australian lockdown blog. The author is me, it's mine, it's my newsletter, I talk about nicotine gum and Tolstoy and Philip K Dick. I am a big fan of The Whippet, a "fun facts" newsletter, kind and witty and not cliche. I do not like long newsletters or 'takes on modern phenomena' newsletters except for The Convivial Society, where a man well versed in Ivan Illich's works writes about technology and its effect on our lives, like how we lost the night sky (I swear he has original clever things to say). I would love to hear if you run a newsletter or like a newsletter!!
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Jul 29, 2021 10:27
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Oh I just noticed this thread! Shame on me I'm a terrible mod. Anyway as a reader of Drei Cafe, i'll vouch for its quality riffs on topics that make me go "yeah, I dig that".
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Aug 14, 2021 20:46
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Yay, a newsletter thread! I'm going to cross post this to the self publishing thread, because the one promo thing you're supposed to do as a self published author is have a newsletter. I have one and I use Sendinblue but I have literally only sent one email which was to announce my book launch. So I'll be here to check out cool newsletters for ideas on how to make mine not suck. Coincidentally I also made this YouTube video about newsletters last week. It is a breakdown of the different technology levels of mailing lists. I am better at understand technology and processes than I am at sending newsletters: https://youtu.be/WPm_npkImEs I had never heard of Substack but went to have a look because you mentioned it. It's looks like Medium meets Patreon to me, but on a platform where you have more control. That'd be my guess as to why it's the hot new thing.
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Aug 16, 2021 16:18
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Ah excellent, a newsletter thread. Will be following this a lot. I run a monthly one for my books, it can definitely be improved. For the record I have 200 and a bit newsletter readers through mail chimp gained purely through the site StoryOrigin. The numbers grow and shrink over time as people opt in or out but in a nutshell: Created a Sci fi/cyberpunk trilogy and up on kdp it went. Then created a 17k novella reader magnet, leading into the first book. A kind of 'what happened before the grand adventure kicked off.' This too is for sale on Amazon or you can get it free if you opt into the newsletter. Free newsletter sub or 99 cents, you can guess which gets more attention. Each month I do promotions with other authors on SO, plugging either their promos (collections of books on sale or found in kdp for example) where they plug my stuff and vice versa. There's also newsletter swaps where you can point to each others reader magnets. Everybody gets clicks, sometimes people even buy stuff hooray! THINGS I'VE LEARNT ALONG THE WAY -According to the limited (read: free) stats through Mail chimp my audience is largely 65+. I'm far from that age bracket and I didn't think cyberpunk style books would hold that much appeal to those 60 plus but that's what the numbers say. Maybe they've got more time for newsletters? --My open rate ranges around the 50% mark on a good day. Click rate around 13%. You will have many that sign up and never do anything for as long as they stay. Which may be just one campaign/newsletter. -I lose a handful of numbers with every newsletter but gain more from the magnet across the month. -Once in a blue moon someone will send you an email from something you mentioned in your newsletter. One wished me good luck for my interstate move which was nice. -I don't make much money at all through this even on new releases. I take this as a lesson in improving covers, blurbs, communications etc. Anyway that's me, I'm keen to read what everyone else here is up to and what's working (and what's not.)
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Aug 17, 2021 08:08
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I'm thinking about starting a newsletter about weird old science fiction & fantasy novels. I've never really written non-fiction before, and coming from a fiction perspective I wonder how you get feedback on a piece before sending it? Do people have some kind of regular relationship with a beta reader, or do you just shoot from the hip?
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Jul 8, 2022 09:05
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Sailor Viy posted:I'm thinking about starting a newsletter about weird old science fiction & fantasy novels. I just send it to a couple of mates for feedback. The hard thing I found about newsletters is that, in my experience, the best way to revise writing is to chuck it into a metaphorical drawer for a couple months and then re-read it. With a regular newsletter cadence, that's not an option. What worked okay was starting the subsequent newsletter issue immediately after sending one out, just getting a sloppy ol' draft on a page, and then waiting a few days to refine it. Spacing out time between revisions makes the revisions easier.
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Aug 25, 2022 02:27
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Planning to start my newsletter soon. Here's what I've learned about the different hosting platforms: Substack Pros: - slick looking - free, but takes 10% of your income from paid subscriptions. so a pretty good deal if you aren't planning to monetise it - has comments, likes and other social features Cons: - kind of has a notoriety for platforming antivaxxers, transphobes, etc and has had some people demonstratively leave the platform in disgust - no variety design-wise; every substack looks the same - if your newsletter blows up and makes you tons of money, 10% is more expensive than a flat fee Ghost Pros: - has lots of automated templates (similar to wordpress or squarespace) - has comments Cons: - $9 monthly fee that ramps up with more subscribers Buttondown Pros: - cute minimalist design - you can use CSS and HTML to style it how you want Cons: - no social features - you need to have a basic knowledge of CSS and HTML - $9 monthly fee Beehiiv Pros: - nice landing page that looks a bit more like a traditional blog Cons: - embarrassing name At the moment I'm torn between Buttondown and Substack. Substack would be cheaper, and it would be nice to have comments available. I don't know if it's wrong to, in some nebulous way, "support" a platform that platforms hate speech. I would prefer not to share a platform with Graham Linehan! But is it actually any different from posting on Twitter or Facebook?
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Dec 5, 2022 10:47
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Sailor Viy posted:Planning to start my newsletter soon. Here's what I've learned about the different hosting platforms: Do you think monetizing a presence on twitter or facebook is morally neutral? How about Truth Social, Parler, or Gab? Do you think publicly using a product in the way its intended is somehow not support? What is the benefit of public comments on a newsletter? Will the people you are targeting as readers be willing to use substack? (Rephrased, are you okay not having transgender people in your audience? Because that’s a likely outcome if not now whenever Substack edges further toward libertarian ideals.) Maybe you’ve already decided, but it feels like you’re avoiding answering some questions for the sake of convenience.
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Dec 5, 2022 12:47
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Grassy Knowles posted:Do you think monetizing a presence on twitter or facebook is morally neutral? How about Truth Social, Parler, or Gab? Interesting question. I'd say using Twitter or Facebook (or Spotify) to promote yourself is not morally neutral, but forgivable, because there really is no other Twitter or Facebook. If you're trying to reach certain audiences in a certain way, there are no alternatives to those platforms. The same can't really be said of Substack. Grassy Knowles posted:Will the people you are targeting as readers be willing to use substack? (Rephrased, are you okay not having transgender people in your audience? Because that’s a likely outcome if not now whenever Substack edges further toward libertarian ideals. Yes, this is the crux of it. Hard to say for sure if Substack will become more libertarian, but it does seem to be leaning that way. I tried browsing the "front page" of Substack (which I've never really done before) and I was surprised by how quickly I ended up on alt-right pages and even Qanon stuff. That stuff is also present on Twitter, I'm sure, but the filter bubble does a better job of insulating you from it. So yeah I'm going to go with Buttondown.
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Dec 7, 2022 02:05
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