ð£Announcements, Numbers, and Polls
With art by Pier Hardin
ð¬Whoops!
First of all, apologies again for the confusion around Fridayâs post, âBird-Bolts and Cannon-Bullets V.â It was meant to go out in its entirety to both free and paid subscribers, but I must have done something wrong. I tried to correct the mistake with a second email to free subscribers, but I fear that just made things more confusing. In any case, everyone should be able to read it now on both the website and the Substack app.
Some possible changes
As the fall semester has gotten going, it has become more challenging to sustain the pace of two essay-length posts per week in addition to the weekly roundup on Fridays. And while I have already drafted the promised Aristotle piece, I would like to take a couple more days to revise, so that will appear on Wednesday. (I spend more time revising than I do drafting.)
When I took Labor Day weekend off and posted some dog pics instead of a full-length post, you seemed to like it. This made me think that I could possibly give you a shorter post on Sundays, perhaps with some of Pierâs art (see above, and visit her website), perhaps with a poem, or with a briefer or more extemporaneous bit of writing, along with the occasional cute dog pic. On Wednesdays, I could post a longer essay, as I have been doing, and on Fridays, I could continue with the roundups. If I go with this plan, I would probably move the Stack of the Week to Sunday, since the Wednesday post is usually fairly long.
I like the look of this new plan, but Iâm interested in your preferences, so please participate in the poll below:
Iâm still figuring this whole thing out, so I would like your feedback. Please respond to the poll, and also please give me more specifics in the comments about what you would like in terms of frequency and length.
The Numbers
As I am drafting this, it has been two months to the day since I published my first post here at PCF. Growth has been slow but steady. We are now up to 78 subscribers across eighteen US states, twelve countries, and five continents, and well over 2000 page views per month. I realize that this is peanuts in internet terms, but it seems like a lot to me. After all, publishing in academic journals, which is what Iâm used to, often feels like writing into the void. Though I have been posting some promotional pictures to Instagram, it seems that most new subscribers come from people like you spreading the word, so do please continue to share PCF with your friends and family and with anyone else you think might be interested. I have no idea what the potential growth for PCF might be. If it stays pretty small, thatâs fine, but it would be nice for more people who might be interested to find it.
(12 countries! Hello, by the way, to our friends in New Zealand and Australia! I hope to make it there some day. Also, there are readers in the UK, Canada, Brazil, Norway, Germany, the UAE, Portugal, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. I hope I didnât leave anyone outâlet me know in the comments if I did. Hello to all of you! What a world we live in.)
Engagement
By far the most popular post in terms of page views and engagement has been âEnglish Majors Will Save the Freaking World,â with âTolkien and Vaughan Williams Meet on a Trainâ a distant second. These two posts also generated the most new subscriptions. (Note to self: more click-baity titles and more hobbits.) However, Iâve also had paid subscribers tell me that what they most look forward to is the weekly roundup, and this past Fridayâs freely available roundup generated a lot of traffic. So let me know: what would you like more of or less of? Make no mistake, I will continue to write about whatever the hell I want, but I will certainly take your preferences into consideration.
Plans
As I announced in August, I do have more things planned for this space. In the coming months, I intend to launch the series of Conversations with Extraordinary People, and I also have a couple of promised pieces by terrific guest writers in the works. (How is this for a teaser? One of them is a Pulitzer Prize winner.) These may take a couple of months, but they are forthcoming. Next spring, the Classroom Journal will document my course âMedieval Ecologies from Beowulf to Tolkien.â So for those of you who enjoyed the Tolkien post, there is more hobbit-related material to come!
Premium Subscriptions
To those of you who are paid subscribers, I send you my sincere thanks. There are only a few of you, but I so much enjoy writing the roundup for your reading pleasure. In fact, what I thought at first would be just a bit of lagniappe has turned into one of my favorite parts of the week. You may have noticed that the roundup has gotten longer and more involved, and I expect that to continue.
To those of you who are free subscribers, Iâm also very grateful for you. The fact that you are willing to let me into your mailboxes a couple of times a week means a lot to me. If you want to keep things the way they are without the extra Friday post, itâs totally fine with me. I know what itâs like to have a tight budget (Iâm an academic, remember?), so I understand if itâs too much to pay for a premium subscription. But if you did enjoy the sample weekly roundup on Friday and would like more of that, itâs just five bucks a month, or even less if you subscribe for a year. So if you can afford it, then consider a small investment in writing that you valueâthe cost of one cappuccino a month. If you want a pain-free way to try it out, then here is a 60-day free trial:
I personally pay for five Substack premium subscriptions a month, and thatâs pretty much my limit, and so I know itâs not an easy choice. There are many others whom I would like to support if I could. So if you donât want subscribe to PCF, then consider another favorite Substack writer to support. Check out my former Stacks of the Week for possibilities. They need five dollars more than Disney does.
ð£ïžComments
Finally, I ask once again that you chime in below, in the comments section. It would help me a lot to know what it is, specifically, that you value here so that I can do more of it. The best thing about writing on Substack is this immediate connection to readers with no gatekeepers to get in the way. So please: let me know what you think.
Cute Dog pic
And here is the moment that you have all been waiting for:
Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet typewriter to yours.
I suggest you concentrate on what you want to write. I subscribe here because I like your work. I imagine that's true for most, if not all of your readers.
Writing what you like may not get you huge numbers, but you'll do well, and enjoy it more.
I'm not sure pandering will have the effect you hope. It typically drains the joy and makes this more like work.
I vote for essays best, teaching discussions next, and then anything and everything (not to exclude dog pictures, nor to yield them the whole of Shakespeare's second best bed). But this is only because you ask. Really, anything you want to write is just dandy. With apologies to Sir Philip Sidney:
Loving truth, and fain on Substack my love to show,
That subs, dear subs, might take some pleasure of my optic strain,â
Pleasure might cause them read, reading might make them know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,â
I sought direction for which course to go;
Studying inventions fine their wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
Such words came pouring forth, wanting any stay;
Invention, Nature's child, so filled me to my toes
That once I asked some strangers for the way.
Thus great with child to speak and helpless in my throes,
Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite,
"Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write."
:-)