I started writing these emails 5 years ago. After writing about 80 of them, I wanted to reflect on my experience and what I’ve learned. I’ll be back with regular content in a couple of weeks.
Learnings and takeaways
Structure and consistency wins.
I started writing in graduate school, where I had ample time to review 2-3 books every couple of weeks.
But then I graduated, started work, and had my first kid. Life got busier and my output became more sporadic.
At the end of 2022, I decided to re-commit to writing. My first goal was consistency. I re-committed to writing an email every 2 weeks, which I’ve done a fairly good job of, writing one of these every 17 days on average.
Writing at a regular cadence is much easier for me than doing when I “have time.” Fewer decisions are good.
Making the time and being efficient.
I break the process of writing into 3 parts and generally solve for efficiency.
Reading: I try to read most days even if it’s for a few minutes at night, but I get the majority done on weekends. I’m ruthless about abandoning anything that’s not “great”. How do I define a great book? If I find myself reading it at times where I’d usually be on my phone, it’s a great book. If I bring up the book or its ideas to other people in conversation, it’s a great book.
Synthesizing: I read paper versions of my books, so I’ll often flip through it when I’m done and write down some of the key takeaways. I also try to spend time thinking about what I’ll write ahead of time - while taking a walk, I might think through the themes of the piece in my head.
Writing: This requires focus and energy. Weekend evenings, after my kids are asleep, are when I write. Because I have a regular cadence, I just have to show up and write.
There are tradeoffs between quality and efficiency.
Excellent writing - which includes plenty of editing - takes lots of time. Given my priorities, I have chosen to be OK with something that is “good enough.” And I am.
I’m also not writing something for the New York Review of Books that has to be a masterpiece. I’m just writing thoughts. Thoughts are simple.
“Going viral” is really hard.
When I re-committed to writing 2 years ago, I thought “Okay, I just have to write something good, then I will ‘go viral’ and have 50,000 subscribers and my life will be great.”
I do not have 50,000 subscribers today.
Getting thousands of subscribers is really hard! We think it’s easy because we only “see” the successful newsletters which have gotten there - we aren’t aware of the thousands writing in obscurity.
I’ve tried a few things here.
One thing you’re “supposed” to do is to go on Twitter, tweet at people, develop an audience there, and hope you get retweeted or picked up. But that is fairly time consuming and there are other things I'd rather spend the marginal hour on (family, work, sleep). My sense is that “doing Twitter” well also requires you to be fairly responsive and check it regularly - if anything, I am trying to spend less time on the internet or screens when not working.
How else can you get people to subscribe? Some people say to tell everyone you know and ask them to subscribe - I’ve done a bit of this in the past, but don’t think it’s fair to people (as you’re putting them in a tough position). I’ve also tried emailing authors with the hope that they’ll publicize my posts, but I haven’t gotten much engagement here (though the sample size is low and I could ask more explicitly).
Finally, “going viral” or being read widely requires excellent content. The bar for someone to take the time to forward an email, for example, is fairly high.
An interesting question is why people care about having subscribers. At least for me, producing work that is good enough for people to spend their time consuming feels good and makes me feel like I am a decent writer, which is part of my identity. It’s also a metric that feels gamified.
I’m okay with not having a ginormous readership - my life is great as is - but this experience has given me an appreciation for self-promotion (in the best sense of the word) and marketing / publicity.
What you said about “going viral” and not doing the stereotypical self-promotion on Twitter reminded me of the recent Tim Ferris podcast with Cal Newport on Slow Productivity. I have pre-ordered his book, I think Cal is a great thinker, and one of the things he talks about is just mastering your craft, and slowly the rest will take of itself. I say don’t worry about getting yourself as many subscribers as you can, keep being consistent with your writing and working on making it as good as you can in the time you have given yourself. Your audience will find you! Keep up the good work, I enjoy reading your book reviews.