The Tidings backstory
Hello, and tidings from Thom!
Two things spurred me to create an email newsletter - sage advice from writer Robin Sloan (Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough) and the death of facebook notes.
London's Tower bridge, photo by author
Robin Sloan
Some years back (2014), I was on Robin Sloan's website, likely while researching Ajax Penumbra, a novella prequel. I signed up for his emails, because who doesn't want to hear from an author writing a new book or touring to your town? Ah, but this was no ordinary sign-up...
Robin is a firm believer in newsletters. Here's his rationale, quoted verbatim:
In addition to sending several email newsletters, I subscribe to many, and I talk about them a lot; you might have heard me say this at some point (or seen me type it) but I think any artist or scholar or person-in-the-world today, if they don't have one already, needs to start an email list immediately.
I was immediately taken with this view. Facebook, reddit, twitter, youtube - these are all content aggregators. They take the content you provide and publish it, collecting both interest and ad revenue. Aside from that venal sin, they also provide (and control) the forum. Anyone can comment on your work or thoughts, and we've all heard the caution about the comment section. An up- or down-vote is not sufficient to generate intelligent responses.
An email can put the same content out there, but becomes a more direct conversation, between you and the recipient. The best of the comment section is just this, a conversation between two or more parties - and email can provide that in a better way.
I replied to Robin to ask for suggestions, and received them. I created Tidings on the spot - though I did not yet generate any content.
Facebook Notes
The social network has gone through ups and downs, and I am not a big fan of the changes. Early on, it consisted of folks telling us what their dinner was, playing games and "poking" one another. There was another feature they had that was interesting - notes.
The idea was that a more substantive post could be a "note", with controlled formatting and even an image. A special URL was provided - https://www.facebook.com/notes - which would show only notes written by you, your friends, and those you were following. This was very much blog aggregator behavior. When I wrote notes, I used them to highlight larger things, including a year-end book report.
For some reason, the ability to create new notes has been removed, though existing posts remain (for the time being). I can only speculate on why, though monetization probably factors heavily. This move by them has given me the perfect reason to move on.
Welcome
So welcome to my newsletter. I can't promise weekly posts, though I will try. Should you reply with a comment or correction, rest assured I plan to read them all. In the next few issues, I will continue to migrate my facebook notes to this more permanent location.
Using this site automatically provides a subscribe and unsubscribe link (hello, friends in Europe!) and access to an archive.
Cheers! --Thom