The Vampire Prison flip through video
1. Different
A different format! I'm trying a different thing this time around, as you can see. Shopify has a 'blog' option and I'm wondering if that makes sense as a thing to use instead of the newsletter format.
2. The Vampire Prisoner flip through
The printer sent me the innard pages for The Vampire Prisoner. Here is a flip through video:
My pal Rebecca just happened to be visiting on a my-dog-was-sprayed-by-a-skunk-and-she-needs-to-check-if-it-still-smells-so-bad-that-it-is-not-allowed-in-her-house inspection when Fedex delivered the package. She was gracious enough to sit with me while I inspected the pages on video. I shot the video because I wanted to be sure to catch my reaction when I discovered whatever horrible problem was hidden in the page block. Having Rebecca there, ready to call an ambulance, was just good luck.
But, spoiler, nothing was spoiled. The pages look great.
I wish they were a little more contrasty, but that's it. And the paper is good. Not what I was expecting, but I like it. It's a pearly matte. I'm guessing the slightly matte paper is the reason the contrast isn't where I would like it to be.
And these are the -actual- pages that are going into the book. Like, they printed the entire run of innards and assembled the book blocks, THEN sent me this for a proof. That's a new one on me. Every printer is a new adventure.
And this was a new one on me: They printed an ordering number on each folded signature spine. Normally I get a stack of signatures and use a marker to make a sloppy diagonal slash down the spine side of the stack so that they can easily be put back into order. This is the first time I've seen organizing information printed on the signatures. Emphasis on SEEN. Maybe this is always a thing and I just never noticed.
So I'm happy with The Vampire Prisoner's guts.
A reminder: Everyone who backed So You've Met A Thousand Year Old Vampire is also getting a copy of The Vampire Prisoner. I promised you folks 600+ pages and the two books together make up that count.
I laughed while making the video because a dedicated person could read much of the book in the video. Don't do that, you'll wind up with a squint and a headache. I'll send out PDFs in the first or second week of October.
3. Short
I'm going to wind these newsletter/blog thing up early, even though I have more I want to write. I dunno if this is going to work as a newsletter so I don't want to get too invested.
4. I CAN EDIT!
Holy shit, I can edit the blog post after sharing it. I'm writing this after seventeen comments were added to the page.
Such a mixed reaction! Exactly what I didn't want.
What are the benefits of the blog, though? For some of you it is easier to read, for others it is harder. Lou points out that the blog makes the newsletter available to new visitors. I've had folks ask about access to old newsletters, so the blog would satisfy that demand (as thin as it is).
The sensible thing is to write the newsletter as usual then xfer it to the blog (or vice versa). Both make sense and having both in no way affects the folks that prefer one or the other. Somewhere there'll be a Shopify plugin that'll let me easily translate between them and it'll be worth a couple of bucks, I guess.
The only downside to the blog format is the inevitability of the blog's ending. I'm always suspicious when a group's "News" page hasn't been updated since 2022, even though they are still in business and only stopped updating because the intern moved on.
Happy Halloween Month Eve,
Tim H
I hope you continue to offer your most excellent thoughts in an email newsletter format. My PTSD from past blogs where commenters descend upon each other like vicious, highly opinionated werehounds runs deeply. I also think one of the highlights for me about reading your newsletters from my inbox is not thinking about every other recipient’s potential thoughts and reactions when reading your newsletter. But do what you must, friend.
I appreciate very much the sharing of the process of making something, the trials and tribulations of working with printers, etc.
also appreciate the trials and tribulations of a newsletter, a blog, etc – I have been suffering for wanting to emulate/do similar things and it’s both feeling reassuring and perpetuating frictions, hahaha. I just need to do the thing and understand that it will come with a modicum of rough edges, no matter what I do.
Also from your email insight: re: prison / RNG – brilliant insight.
For preservation, new audience on-boarding, and historical purposes, the blog offers benefits. Like you mentioned in your reply oct 1, having an intern or someone upload the newsletter to the blog could capture this benefit because Internet Archive cannot archive emails, but an interested individual could make it a personal project to capture an artist’s blog for longevity.
People (like me, who missed the first years of your newsletter) will not have access to those years unless someone is kind enough (and has saved them) to forward each individual message to an avid fan, personally and directly.
Someone else might be able to speak to RSS these days and open rates, conversions to purchases, and real activity instead of forgotten subscriptions sent to a folder or filtered and thus never opened/seen but still counted on subscribers.
There should be something in the back end to ensure an email address is entered. Some blogs can still feel zine-like—it depends on the amount of time you want to put into them. You could invite people to email you directly instead of replies on the platform. There is a way in html to code the href so that the email autopopulated the subject line which could be tied to that week’s title or date or something of your choice. (I haven’t read the later pages of replies to build upon, so might be repeating other people.)
So…was Rebecca’s dog still smelled so bad that it still couldn’t be allowed in her house?
Hey, this thing’s got an Atom feed! Lovely. <3