Building your platform on your own land

Thoughts on newsletters, blogs, social media, and enshittification

Building a Shelter by Thomas Sully (public domain)

Recently, when I had to go onto Threads to promote the new edition of my book The Ones Who Got Away, I saw that there was a debate going on amongst writers and readers about whether authors should do a newsletter or not. People had strong feelings.

My first thought was Wow, I rarely open Threads but every time I do there is an argument or a debate with a contentious edge going on. What’s up with that?

I did not step into the fray because I’ve made it a rule not to get into debates/arguments on social media. It’s distracting, stressful, and usually a huge waste of time.

But…my second thought was Of course authors should have a newsletter. So I guess I have some strong feelings too and thought I’d talk more about it here.

Newsletters: Yay or Nay?

The argument against them, at least according to the conversation I saw, is that “no one reads newsletters” and it “junks up people’s inboxes.”

Well, no, the reality is much more nuanced than that. The truth is that people don’t read bad or boring newsletters. And that yeah, badly written newsletters or ones that just feel like an ad and don’t attempt to connect with readers human-to-human do feel like junk or spam.

However, a well-written newsletter that offers something of value—something interesting or helpful or fun—is a different animal altogether. In my experience, people really like those. I mean, Substack is an entire platform set up for people to pay for newsletters. So yes, there are people who like newsletters.

And even if you don’t want to be a newsletter writer (which is totally okay!), just having an email list where you can announce news of a new book release can be a really helpful service, especially for a reader who doesn’t want to have to follow you on social media and hope the algorithms show them your updates (which they increasingly don’t.)

This can just be an actual letter about your news (newsletter isn’t just a clever name ;) ) that you send out once a month or once a quarter. And if you share that news in your own voice and share a little tidbit or an anecdote, it’s going to offer that opportunity for connection with your readers.

And if you are an author who enjoys adding more content to your newsletter, then have fun with it! In my author newsletter, I share recommendations for books, movies, and TV shows. I talk about reading. I sometimes share about my writing process. I’ve talked about cookbooks and planners and You’ve Got Mail and the freaky Mandela effect I experienced. I write what interests me and magically, that often interests others as well. It doesn’t have to be that fraught.

Your own land & enshittification

Here’s why I get on a soapbox about this when I’m generally a you-do-you person when it comes to author-y things. I’ve seen people build big platforms on social media alone and then that social media either gets enshittified (using Cory Doctorow’s terminology), meaning it changes the rules on you and gets increasingly worse for both users and businesses and readers don’t see your stuff anymore, or a service blows up completely. Then you’re left with the ashes of all that work you put in.

Enshittification:

“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” —Cory Doctorow

Your own website and your email newsletter list are yours. You’re building something on your own land. Yes, you have to get people to it—and you can use social media for that—but you don’t have to worry that the rug is going to be ripped from beneath you or that the rules are going to change overnight.

Experiments

All of this also got me thinking about my own author newsletter. (Which, by the way, I acknowledge Substack is also a service that could get enshittified, but the difference is that I can take my email list with me if it does, unlike social media where you can’t take your follower list.)

As much as I’m an advocate for newsletters, I’ve been struggling to be as consistent as I used to be with my author newsletter. At some points in my career, I’ve been a weekly newsletter sender. More recently, it’s been once a month-ish. I wanted to figure out why I was having more trouble with it when it used to be something I looked forward to.

I realized that I get a lot of ideas for things I’d like to write about, but often those ideas don’t feel “meaty” enough to send out a whole newsletter for. I do want to be judicious with what I send to people’s inboxes. However, that has meant that a lot of things didn’t get written and then newsletters didn’t get sent.

Thinking through this, I realized there’s this liminal space between content that is a quick social media update type thing and content that is “newsletter-worthy” (which makes me think of Seinfeld and Elaine’s “sponge-worthy.”)

That in-between content used to go onto an author’s blog—at least that’s how it worked for me. Blogs were much more casual. If I was thinking about something, whether it was “meaty” or not, I could post it on my blog and discuss it in the comments. It was fun. It was low-key. (Also, unlike social media, you could take your content with you. I still have all of my Blogger posts even after I left that service.)

I want that kind of space back.

Blogging? Really?

So I’ve decided to dust off ye olde blog on my website and do an experiment.

One of the concepts I came across recently is POSSE, which stands for Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Everywhere. The Verge has a good explanation of this:

The idea is that you, the poster, should post on a website that you own. Not an app that can go away and take all your posts with it, not a platform with ever-shifting rules and algorithms. Your website. But people who want to read or watch or listen to or look at your posts can do that almost anywhere because your content is syndicated to all those platforms. —The Verge, The Poster’s Guide to the Internet of the Future

I’m not doing all the techie things involved with a true POSSE system, but I love the idea of posting on a home base (blog and newsletter) and then distributing it to the social media sites. You still have your content on your own turf, but your followers on social media can also access it. Plus, you get a little SEO boost on your website for having fresh content. And if you link the blog to feed to your Goodreads, you get some fresh content over on your author profile as well.

For my blog, that means I can post about those in-between things I’m thinking about without the pressure of them being “newsletter-worthy” but then I can link to them in my newsletter for those who are interested in reading them so that they still get seen.

For example, over the last week, I’ve blogged about My Nerdy Reading Stats and How to Find New-To-You Music. I will link to those posts in my next author newsletter. I’ve also shared them on my social media. It’s already been fun having conversations in the comments on those posts.

I think this is a more sustainable way for me to do things and will keep it fun. Now, I’m not saying every author needs to blog again. (Don’t come for me about “blogging is dead!” lol) Unlike the newsletter thing, which I think is important to have in some capacity, I think authors should only blog if they love blogging and have a way to get people to the blog.

I’ve always liked blogging. Unlike making TikTok videos (no one wants me doing that, believe me, lol), blogging plays to my strengths. (And as a Gallup Strengths Coach, that’s important to me!) So I think this is a good avenue for me. I can have a home for shorter content on the blog, still have newsletter exclusive stuff and now extra links to include, and then distribute those things to my social media as well.

We shall see how it goes! Like everything else, it’s an experiment.

Alright, this was a long one. Thoughts? How do you feel about newsletters? Blogs? The POSSE concept? The enshittification of social media? Let’s talk!