21 January 2021 ☼ Personal ☼ Meta
“Jessica,” you say, patiently, “are you a journalist with a national reputation who has left a traditional platform under a fame-enhancing cloud of controversy? Do you expect that thousands will rejoice as soon as you say the magic word ‘Substack’? No? Then this merits an exclamation point why, exactly?”
Well, Reader-Who-Is-Probably-Not-Actually-That-Skeptical-in-Real-Life, this allows you to not have to wander over to this blog on a regular basis waiting for me to get off my butt and update, but enjoy a nice little digest in the comfort of your own inbox. And it is not on Substack. Although I will go ahead and point out that a bunch of fellow Jukeboxers are on Substack:
But Substack only makes sense, as far as I can see, if you’re going to write more on the longform side once or twice a week, or if you see yourself branching out into including both free and not-free content. It is less appealing for those of us who just want to say “HEY I WROTE A THING” while continuing to hate Twitter beyond all rational proportion.
(“Twitter has been a lifeline for me,” a dear friend said to me the last time I saw her, about a month ago. I didn’t stop myself in time from giving her an are-you-kidding-me? look, which she graciously tolerated. She’s met all sorts of people she can talk to, out of range of the constant flinging of arrogant nonsense, she explained. I have also met nice people on Twitter, recently and back when I first joined in 2010, but I have so much trouble manipulating the site to keep the arrogant nonsense away that I can barely log in without feeling queasy. I’m keeping the account, since I want people to reach me through DMs and I don’t want to lose a username I’ve had for over a decade, but now that I’ve done the Twitter threads for the Ninety One Series and set up this mailing list, I don’t have reason to go back on my own.)
So you can now sign up for my mailing list, and every other week or so (starting next week, most likely) I will email you with links to the most recent blog posts, plus some Extra Special Subscriber Bonuses. (Which will mainly be me saying hello and throwing in links to articles that I didn’t write but nevertheless think that everyone should read.) I don’t need any personal information other than your email address, and I won’t sell your information to anyone. I reserve the right to sell to you: for example, should I ever publish a book, I would assume that, if you’re already on a mailing list to read my writing, you would also be interested in getting purchasing information for said book. But the Unsubscribe button will be easily at hand.
If this suits you, here’s the form. Have my thanks in advance.