The difference is how newsletters are being reshaped by the internet and related trends in the larger economy, namely: (Neither are the, uh, sometimes-controversial politics.) Which brings us to the #1 thing writers need to know about newslettersĮven as you and I are witnessing this 2021 crush of both tech companies and individual writers into the newsletter game, it’s crucial to understand that these developments are not new. Substack has even started paying six-figure advances to established writers they believe have the power to draw large numbers of paid subscriptions.Īnd you? If you haven’t already started your own newsletter, you’re probably mulling it, just seeing how everyone else is doing it. Both Facebook and Twitter are launching newsletter products, while the CEO of Medium recently declared the platform is pivoting from magazines to focusing on “individual voices,” i.e. And now, in related news, just about every big tech company is announcing that they’re getting into the newsletter game, too. Yesterday’s pamphlets and mail packages closely resemble today’s email newsletters. In fact, “direct mail” was, arguably, how the right bankrolled the Reagan revolution. They understood the power of building one’s own means of distribution, one’s own mailing list. For better or for worse, some 20 th-century political operatives not only ran the same play as Paine-bypassing media outlets and instead mailing their messages directly to their would-be audiences-but wrote entire self-aggrandizing books about the strategy. I’m not the first to notice the overlap between the pamphleteers of the 18 th century and popular present-day mediums. Yes, the audience was there, in abundance, but to reach it, they basically had to start a Substack. He and his fellow “pamphleteers” couldn’t rely on Buzzfeed and the New York Times to deliver up an audience. Paine faced the same problem that you and I face. Danielle Steele? GTFO! But what’s all this got to do with you, one more aspiring, ink-stained wretch, vainly attempting to build your author platform today, some 250 years later? If we take him at his word, then Common Sense remains the bestselling book in U.S. Paine himself, it turns out, was the primary source of information regarding those astounding sales figures. You probably remember this one from history class: Thomas Paine, in 1776, dashed off a pamphlet called Common Sense, encouraging the American colonists to revolt against British rule, with the pamphlet supposedly proving so popular that, in its first three months of publication alone, it sold more than 100,000 copies. Today’s post is by author Catherine Baab-Muguira ( who offers the newsletter Poe can save your life. “Thomas Paine” by Leo Reynolds is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0