Dear reader,

Two years ago or thereabouts, I sat in the office and thought.

And the thought I was thinking was:

“My email strategy is an awful muddle.”

I was running some weird hybrid of newsletter and email list, a frankenstein’s monster of a mailing list that had been assembled piecemeal as I added things on.

On Wednesdays it was all informational and newslettery.

On Fridays it was all up close and personal, full of facts and figures about what I was up to.

And sometimes the days in between were filled with random stories, education and entertaining emails, and a lot more sales material.

It was a mess.

And I wanted to tidy it up.

Kit, the platform I used, was growing increasingly unusable with every update that seemed designed to make the actual act of sending an email impossible. Plus they kept kicking valuable customers off my list.

Meanwhile, this snappy newish platform called Beehiiv was advertising that I could have up to 100,000 subscribers at quite a reasonable price, around a thousand dollars or so. Ideal for a lightly-monetized list that could act as an authority asset and an “entry point” into my weird and wonderful writing world.

So I decided to separate out the Write Way newsletter and run it as a newsletter over here, while moving my customer list into “Carran’s Cabin” on Berserkermail, a cozy and more costly solution but ideal for the daily email side.

Ah, but times change and platforms change too.

Beehiiv recently told me that as of tomorrow, I am no longer allowed 100,000 subscribers.

I’m only allowed 5,000.

Meanwhile, the price of around a thousand dollars a year will be the same.

Well, seeing as Beehiiv itself has done little in helping me grow this newsletter, and seeing as they don’t offer longterm customers any advantage over brand new ones (actually, new ones get a much better deal, discounts, additional support etc.) there’s no harm in experimenting with pastures new.

And so in lieu of the normal newsletter today, I have an announcement:

We are moving over to Substack.

You don’t need to do anything at all, I’ll transfer you across between now and Saturday. You’ll likely get a welcome note when that happens.

And then we’ll carry on as normal.

Except we’ll have a much more useful comments system where we can chat about the Write Way material, access to the Twitter-like Notes that so aggravated Elon when it launched, and subscriber chats and so on. I’m excited for the potential.

Bear with me if there are any teething technical problems as we go. Those of you currently in the Write Way course might find it abruptly stops - fear not, I will send everyone a downloadable PDF or a google doc with the material in it shortly.

Meanwhile, may your pipe puff pleasantly and your routine produce productively,

James Carran, Craftsman Writer

fin

P.s. I will be setting up referrals on Substack soon. But I’ll probably come up with wholly new rewards so those of you who have already earned Write Way Rewards can get new ones. Unless I can manually increase your count over there. It’s all a learning process…