The Newsletter as a Slow Practice

Most email lists are an extraction engine. A few are a practice. We try, as a small press, to be the second kind.

The standard advice for a brand newsletter is to send one per week. The reason given is engagement, but the actual reason is fear — fear that if you do not keep showing up, you will be forgotten. The fear is reasonable. The remedy is not. A newsletter sent from fear feels, on the receiving end, like fear. It is busy. It is upselling. It contains nothing that did not have to be made on a Tuesday because Tuesday was a publishing day.

Our newsletter goes out on the new moon. Twelve or thirteen letters a year. No more.

Why infrequent

Infrequent because we want each letter to deserve being read. Infrequent because a small press only has so many things worth saying, and a weekly cadence forces a press to say less worthwhile things in order to fill the slot. Infrequent because the cycle we keep — the new moon — is itself a discipline, and we wanted the newsletter to teach us the discipline as much as it teaches anyone else.

If we have nothing for you this cycle, you will not hear from us. That is the deal.

What goes in

One letter contains, at most: a note from the studio, one fragment from the universe of the trilogy that did not fit in a book, one essay or recommendation from the blog, and — if there is one — a single quiet announcement of new work. There is no sale. There is no urgency loop. There is no scarcity countdown. When we release new work, we tell you. When we don't, we don't.

Why a small press writes letters at all

Because the alternative is the algorithm. A small press cannot afford to let an algorithm decide which readers see its work. The newsletter is the only channel where the writing reaches the reader unmediated by a feed that does not have either of our interests at heart.

This is also why we treat the list with care. We do not sell it, rent it, lend it, segment it, or otherwise let it leave the studio. The letter goes to you. From there it goes nowhere else.

If you join

If you join the list, you join a slow practice. The cadence is the cadence of the moon. The letter is short. The unsubscribe is one click. We make the work, we put a letter in your inbox once a cycle, you read it or you do not, you stay or you do not. There is no algorithm between us, and there does not need to be one.

That is the entire arrangement. We think it is the right one for a press like ours.