The Smartest Things Ever Said About Email Newsletters

“To all my talented friends: please think about going back to a simple blog or newsletter that you update at a regular frequency. It would be so nice to meet your thoughts and words and images on your own turf, in a simple, peaceful context again. This site is no place to be.” — Austin Kleon

“I shifted to more curating then creation because the world needs trusted editors, and if you can become a trusted editor, that is a media brand.” — Brian Clark

“You can’t kill email! It’s the cockroach of the Internet, and I mean that as a compliment.” — Cameron Moll

“I want the newsletter to feel like a LETTER with news!” — Jason Fried

“Want someone to read the whole thing? Write half as much.” — Jason Fried

“I only care about one subscriber and it is my wife.” — Brian Stelter

“How many eyeballs are passing by is a useless measure. All that matters is, ‘how many people want to hear from you tomorrow?’ Don't try to convert strangers into customers. It's ineffective and wasteful. Instead, focus on turning those momentary strangers into people eager to hear from you again and again.” — Seth Godin

“For my money, email newsletters remain the digital world’s single most efficient source of ideas, information, and insight.” — Daniel Pink

“Email newsletters are totally underrated. Social media, bookmarks, and RSS can all be ignored—email has to be deleted.” — Austin Kleon

“People come for the topic and stay for the voice.” — Merlin Mann

“We simply cannot trust the social networks, or any centralized commercial platform, with these cliques and crews most vital to our lives, these bands of fellow-travelers who are – who must be – the first to hear about all good things. Email is definitely not ideal, but it is: decentralized, reliable, and not going anywhere – and more and more, those feel like quasi-magical properties.“ — Robin Sloan

“These newsletters are the most backed up pieces of writing in history, copies in millions of inboxes, on millions of hard drives and servers, far more than any blog post. These might be the most durable copies yet of ourselves. They’re everywhere but privately so, hidden, piggybacking on the most accessible, oldest networked publishing platform in the world.“ — Craig Mod

“The best newsletters feel like nice letters from smart friends.“ — Craig Mod

“Aside from cockroaches and Maroon 5’s catalog, newsletters will be the only thing to survive (what seems like a more and more impending) nuclear catastrophe. “ — Dave Pell

Check out the rest of this month’s posts on creating email newsletters.