Please, for goodness’ sake, start a mailing list - Austin Kleon

Writing online without collecting emails is like playing Monopoly, passing GO, and not collecting $200...Trying to build an online audience without an email list is a rookie mistake...My email list is my most underrated asset.

This is why writers like newsletters so much. **As other distribution channels are becoming increasingly crowded, email provides an alternative trade route.**

- If you’re going to build an intimate relationship with readers, an email newsletter, an RSS feed, and a social media presence are all essential tools

Email isn’t owned by any one company, so you can reach your readers reliably without intervention by an aggregator. It also comes to you, so you don’t have to remember to keep checking a website.

Email is good for maintaining a direct relationship between readers and writers, but it kinda sucks as a place to read. When I’m checking my inbox I’m in a mode where I want to bat away everything as quickly as possible in order to get to inbox zero. I’m psychologically in a state where everything feels like a chore. Putting great writing there fro... See more

Email is actually a tremendous, decentralized, open platform on which new, innovative things can and have been built. In that way, email represents a different model from the closed ecosystems we see proliferating across our computers and devices.

But despite the amazing ability to tap into SMTP for instant distribution to readers, there’s a tradeoff with this approach: email is static, and as long as email clients are powered by the standard of SMTP, it will remain static. This means Substack cannot use email to do anything dynamic, like personalize the discovery experience of the reader in... See more

While email's continued evolution is significant, what it has retained from the old web sets it apart from the other pretty, convenient apps. Email is an open, interoperable protocol. Someone can use Google's service, spin up a server of her own, or send messages through Microsoft's enterprise software. And yet all of these people can communicate s... See more