Publishing
A mailing list can get treated like a scoreboard, which is a slightly odd way to think about readers.
More names is not always more useful. Sometimes it just means more people who vaguely remember clicking a box three years ago and now ignore everything you send.
The tidier question is less glamorous: who actually wants to hear from you, and why? If the answer is “a smaller group who open the emails and care about the books”, that feels like a better problem to have than a large list built out of habit and optimism.
More names is not always more useful. Sometimes it just means more people who vaguely remember clicking a box three years ago and now ignore everything you send.
The tidier question is less glamorous: who actually wants to hear from you, and why? If the answer is “a smaller group who open the emails and care about the books”, that feels like a better problem to have than a large list built out of habit and optimism.
The awkward bit is that a big list can flatter you into thinking you have an audience when you mostly have a pile of dormant addresses. Open rates are a poor substitute for actual interest, but they do at least tell you who’s still awake. I’d rather know 500 people are paying attention than 5,000 who are politely ignoring me.
A list can be too tidy as well. People unsubscribe, change habits, or just stop noticing. The real test is whether the list still has a pulse.
I’d rather have a small number of regular readers than a grand total that flatters the spreadsheet. Dead names don’t help anyone, and they can make you start writing to the wrong person.
I’d rather have a small number of regular readers than a grand total that flatters the spreadsheet. Dead names don’t help anyone, and they can make you start writing to the wrong person.