A one-link, once-a-weekday email for writers who want to newsletter better.
Each issue of Read This links to an article, blog, video, or other resource that provides helpful insights into building a better readership using an email newsletter.
The strategy questions
According to Seth Godin.
What makes a good newsletter?
A roundtable with five email critics.
200 days of showing up
A quick humble brag (and link roundup).
You should be using an RSS reader
Or: How to fight enshittification.
Share your work with authority
What have you got to lose?
The newsletter benchmarks you should be aiming for
What should your open rate, CTR, Unsub rate, CPA, and other metrics be?
A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people
... and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.
Why informally written emails work better
Some hard data.
Tactics for writing in public
Written from the perspective of a web developer, but this post offers plenty of sound advice from Julia Evans. Read This is curated by Stephen Knezovich. Each issue shares resources and insights to help writers launch, improve & grow their email newsletter. This particular issue links to an article on
Out-random the AI
Make what you will make and be fully human.
The best piece of advice I ever got about newsletters
20+ newsletter-ers offer their favorite piece of newsletter advice.
A portal to random Substacks
A tool to stumble through email hyperspace.
Writing, riffs & relationships
Conversation is the unit of content.
How the biggest newsletters use social media to grow
Apparently Twitter and LinkedIn still work (for some people).
Creative success is a numbers game
Don't overlook the mathematical edge that powers creative breakthrough.
Beyond the search engine
Strategies better than plain Google.
Does this need to be a goal?
A process for cutting unnecessary goals and setting intentions in their place.
Obvious best practices too many newsletters still don’t do
17 ways to improve your newsletter strategy.
Turn up your volume
Why sharing makes your life (and readers' lives) better.
Non-Coercive Marketing
What would marketing look like if it nourished our humanity?
Selling out without selling out
Yancey Strickler attempts to redefine what it means to “sell out.”
How to monetize a blog
A guide to turning your diary into dollars.
I can tell your book was self-published
And that's okay, but we can make it better.
The secret strategy to ramp up your reply rate
A counterintuitive approach from the folks at Inbox Collective.
Outdated expectations kill creative dreams
Don't wait for permission or external validation.
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