Newsletter News
I've really enjoyed the newsletter format, and being able to send you all a tiny essay once a week or so on some issue I'm thinking through for the book project I'm working on. It's been enormously useful, and I've used a number of these posts as jumping-off points for real essays.
However, Substack has a few issues --
I've been writing online since the dark ages, and I've always preferred to host my own content. I mean, I'm so old I nearly lost my PhD qualifying exams, which are pretty formative to all my work, in a floppy disk spin-rate mismatch situation when I upgraded a laptop (I printed them out). I've self-hosted my LivingSmall blog since at least 2005 (when I came off Typepad or Blogger, can't remember which one). And so I went looking for ways to self-host my newsletter.
Substack also has a real problem with white supremacist dickheads, to whom it seems to be paying a bunch of money to bring traffic to it's site.
Mine isn't really a paying newsletter (although if you'd like to throw some money my way, I did add the Buy Me A Coffee link) ... but I just didn't like being on that platform anymore.
So -- here's my experiment in self-hosted newslettters! If anyone wants the gory details on how and which plugin just drop me a note.
If you were subscribed on Substack, no worries, I just shifted the list over to this new format, so you don't have to do anything.
If you weren't subscribed, and would like to be, just click here (or use the form in the sidebar).
If you experience any technical issues -- I'd really appreciate it if you'd leave a comment or drop me an email (or twitter, or whatever).
Thanks so much! Here's to a new platform!