We wrote a book!

What goes into newsletters? What makes them stick?

If you asked enough successful newsletter writers, surely the common threads would come into focus.

Or so was the idea, when we set out to write what, in a burst of creativity, we titled The Newsletter Book. We emailed a bunch of successful newsletter creators, jumped on calls, and chatted through their creative process. What got them started, and kept them going? Why newsletters, of all things one could create? Where do they find inspiration, and what insights did they have after writing millions of words over dozens of years?

The stories were as varied as the speakers. The thing that worked for one was the very thing that didn’t work for another. Yet through the hours of calls and their distilled quotes, it turned out there was a method to the madness.

You show up. Start writing. Send. And then keep at it, for an unreasonably long time, and along the way great things happen.

It’s The Newsletter Book, free and ready to read online or on your favorite eReader (ePub and PDF both there for the taking).

Formally introducing forms

We also added something new to Buttondown that will come in handy if you, too, are publishing a book (or shipping anything else where you’d like people to sign up ahead of time): Forms.

Forms are standalone pages designed to get new subscribers into your newsletter. You’re launching a thing (the other, better newsletter book, perhaps), and want to use a sneak peak of the thing to convince people to sign up. And you want to reach out to them again when the thing is released.

Buttondown Forms let you do all of that in one place. You get a new page for the thing you’re launching, can customize it to your heart’s content, and can add a custom link to easily share the page. When folks sign up, Buttondown will automatically tag them so you can send them sneak peak content with an automation, or filter your list and email them directly on launch day.

Read more, in the Buttondown Forms launch post.

From the blog

In preparation for the Buttondown team’s annual pilgrimage to DjangoCon US last week, Justin published a love letter to Django, the web framework that has powered this humble newsletter platform since the very beginning. It is technical, and opinionated, but worth appreciating if only as a bit of platform history. 

We try to make Buttondown as accommodating as possible for developers and artists alike. There’s not a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram. But we often hear the same question from both groups: Can I use custom fonts in my newsletter? And, as with almost every article in the Ask A Nerd series, it’s complicated.

If you’re hoping to build community and rapport with your own list, you might be miffed when someone subscribes with a “masked” address. If you ask us, private email is fine (nay, good!). You don’t need to know someone’s real address to turn them into a fan. No, the best way to do that is make your newsletter the director’s commentary of your work.

Other stuff

- Behold! You can now create and save list segments. They’re like tag and metadata filters, but with multiple dimensions (or not). Learn more in the feature announcement.

- Some big backend changes to analytics (that are mostly invisible from your perspective) means data should be faster and simpler to query going forward. If you’re interested in the details, everything is in the changelog.