We Hit 10,000!

Biggest-Ever Giveaway, and An announcement About Subscribers

Dear Readers,

I want to share a couple of pre-order recommendations with you before we get into the milestone celebrations this week. There are two books coming out that I think you’ll be interested in, and I’ve found great articles to whet your appetite for each.

Firstly, I really enjoyed this New Yorker profile of Gillian Anderson written by Rebecca Mead. There’s stuff for X-Files fans in there: ‘While shooting Season 1, she became pregnant with her daughter, who was reared largely in Anderson’s trailer.’ And interesting low points in her professional history where she’s honest about criticism wounding her: ‘Anderson was devastated. “I wanted to quit,” she said. “I thought, If that’s what happens when I put everything of myself into something, I am not meant to be doing this.”’ The profile also deals really sensitively and well with Anderson’s sexuality (both how she’s chosen to portray it, and the times in her life she was sexualised without much control) and it’s part of the wider promotional package of the very exciting release of Want, which is officially out on 5 September and available to order now. Want is a collection of anonymous writings from women around the world about their desires and sexualities. It’s edited and introduced by Anderson, and features one of her own stories (anonymously) included too. Big thanks to Bloomsbury for my personalised proof copy. How amazing is this!?

I also recently stumbled across (via my friend Mariam Arcilla’s Insta stories) this amazing article in Atmos magazine: ‘For Black Archaeologists, the Atlantic Ocean is an Ancestral Graveyard’. It’s about the simultaneous ‘healing and terror’ for these historians diving to recover and record the people killed in the transatlantic slave trade. Do yourself a favour and read about it and scroll through the photos of these divers. Amazing. My reading the article coincided with Santilla Chingaipe announcing that her book, Black Convicts: How Slavery Shaped Australia is available for pre-order at your local indie here.

This book ‘adds another vital layer to our understanding of European settlement in Australia by placing it in its global context, showing how directly it was related to—and sustained by—the slave trade… Australia would not have been colonised were it not for the slave trade.’ Black Convicts comes out at the end of October and you should follow Santi for announcements about her tour dates. I’m looking out for her Sydney visit!

Best wishes and happy reading,

Bri

Our Big Milestone Moment! An Announcement About Subscriber Numbers. And of Course the Biggest-Ever Giveaway.

Those of you who’ve been reading for a little while and following the ‘deprofessionalisation’ process are aware I’ve been giving a lot of time and thought to what we’re building here at News & Reviews. Last week’s post and the conversations that came from it solidified something I’ve been working up the courage to acknowledge: no great media offering or community can go both wide and deep at the same time. I can’t chase limitless growth in free subscriber numbers while simultaneously keeping the paid subscribership delighted and rigorous.

Ten thousand people is a lot. More importantly: ten thousand readers is enough. I’m officially pivoting away from any kind of growth mindset and am going to double down on community development and depth.

So, buckle up my reading friends. News & Reviews is three years old. The past three months have been an awkward voice-breaking, period-getting puberty phase. We’re now adulting and it’s gonna be fucking EXCELLENT.

In my dashboard Substack shows me each subscriber’s ‘Activity’ rating out of five stars. Stars show me who is opening each edition I sent out, and I can also use a ‘filter’ function to show me lists of people who have liked or commented on editions over time.

Every time the subscriber numbers hit 10,100 I’m going to email the 100 least engaged subscribers and check in whether or not they really want to be here, and if they don’t reply asking to stay, I’ll just un-subscribe them. (Can you hear me laughing?) My goal in numbers is to get our open rate up to around 80-90%. My goal in feeling is to know and trust that the people who are here every week are kind nerds. Why? If I know who you are I can make this place awesome for us specifically, rather than trying to appeal to some mythical bigger number of potential future sign-ups.

I am committing to us and I feel really bloody excited about it.

What else does this mean?

• Rewards for engaged readers and people who contribute to the community. Starting right here and now with the giveaway I’m putting my money where my mouth is. There are eight huge prize packs, and I’m giving them to a random selection of five-star readers.

• Each week the best comment from any free subscriber will be offered a 6-month comp subscription.

• Once I’m back from Sri Lanka in mid-October, we’re going to return to doing our monthly reading picks, where at the beginning of the month I announce the book, then we all have the month to read it, and at the end of the month we come together to discuss somehow. (Just working out the nuts-and-bolts for how this will happen technically and logistically. There has been much excited discussion over in the Chat about it including voice memos from you. I’m in discussions with the delightfully giggling Sam, audio producer extraordinaire from Cool Story.)

The outcome of all this? That News & Reviews is guaranteed to be a place full of 10,000 kind nerds. We love reading. We love depth and nuance. We’re grateful to have a corner of the internet that can challenge us intellectually minus wankers and shit-talkers and time-wasters and all the crap clogging the rest of our feeds everywhere else.

I’ll keep serving a weekly mixture of recommendations and longer essay pieces. We’ll do the occasional special edition for an author or destination deep-dive. But now that I know who you are, and we can get fun together a little more. Here’s a random example. Reader Christina asked this in the comments section last week:

There is no doubt in my mind that at least one of you kind nerds has a great recommendation for a book stand chonky enough to prop up an Ottolenghi. I want one too! Are any of you woodworkers? Etsy aficionados? Please let’s crowdsource this.

And if you’ve been scrolling all this time, bored, wondering where you can just enter the biggest-ever giveaway, then sorry to disappoint! I picked the 80 most engaged News & Reviews readers from the last three years and randomly selected eight of them and I’ve already told them they’ve won. :) :) :) :) :) WELCOME TO THE NEW VIBE. The lucky winners are:

• Sapphira Toh

• Emma Pursey

• Sharmani Singh

• Caitlin Ziegler

• Elisa Williams

• Jess Leslie

• Elise Robertson

• Ana Regler

I’ve emailed you all. Everyone else scroll down and drool.

Okay, that’s all from me for now. If you’re excited about this pivot and glow-up, and if you’ve got any ideas for community development, let me know in the comments.

Giveaway #1 - Australian:

Giveaway #2 - Australian:

Giveaway #3 - International Blue:

Giveaway #4 - International Yellow:

Giveaway #5 - International Orange:

Giveaway #6 - International Black:

Giveaway #7 - Irish:

Giveaway #8 - International: