Hello!
You may be receiving this via email, or you may be reading this online. Either way I am pleased that you are here. 😊
(You can listen to me read this post via the audio below if you prefer)
If you are receiving this by email you were likely already on my mailing list. In that case you may recall the last message you received from me where I said that I was starting a new publication called Things I don’t Talk about at Parties, on a platform called Substack.
I also mentioned that, once I got my bearings with that, I would eventually be moving Letter from Iceland, and my mailing list, to that same platform.
Consider that done. ✅ You have been transferred.
Meaning that this is the very first Letter from Iceland written on Substack, and I must say that I am excited about this change, for a number of reasons.
Blogging 2.0
First of all, Substack is a platform designed to make writing and publishing meaningful content super easy. In the past I was using MailChimp to send my newsletters, which was cumbersome and clunky and made the writing of each newsletter a major chore. Which made it really hard to justify the time spent, which is why it probably fizzled out in the end.
Substack is in many ways reviving the golden age of blogging that we saw at the beginning of the 2000s, before social media effectively steamrolled blogs. Many creators (myself included) have become weary of the social media hamster wheel, not to mention all the noise and distraction—the endless notifications designed to hook you in, the attention-grabbing, brain-frying content the algorithm pushes at you, the echo chambers that have done more to polarize people and opinions in the last 20 years than perhaps anything else. That last point is particularly egregious, in my view—people no longer discuss ideas or hold space for someone else’s views, they just scream at each other on Facebook or (shudder) X.
We are tired of putting in hard work to create content for MegaCorp (or should that be MetaCorp) that then gets shown to only a fraction of our audience—effectively working for free, and then additionally having to pay money to have our content shown to those who have followed us precisely in order to see our content.
Substack offers a different model, one that gives more ownership and agency to the creator. If you, dear reader, want to see my content, you only have to hit the subscribe button (nb if you were previously on my mailing list, you are already subscribed) and you will be notified when I put up a post. You will not be notified when someone named Jukka in Finland comments on a post in a group about how to brew kombucha that you joined sometime in the distant past (can you remember when?), or when your friend Jane Payne comments on a post made by her friend Joe Poe whom you have never heard of.
You can decide whether you want to receive these notifications about new content via email, or in an app that you can download for your smartphone—depending on how clutter-free you wish to keep your inbox. Just search for Substack in the relevant app store.
Another reason creators love Substack is that it makes it easy for us to get paid for our work directly from our audience, or those who wish to support what we do. This is huge. Back in the days of blogging, many of us burned out because the writing we were producing incorporated research, fact-checking, photography, photo edits, and numerous text edits, not to mention coding, before it was published. It was a lot of work for one person. And we were expected to do it for free, because at that time everything on the internet was free. Granted, that all should be free is still the prevailing sentiment even today, which is why traditional media is struggling, investigative reporting has been decimated, and fake news flourishes, but I believe the thinking is shifting somewhat and the realization is settling in that producing content is work, and work should be compensated.
On Substack, subscribers can choose to become paid subscribers, or not. The owner of the Substack publication (the creator) can decide whether they want to reserve all or part of their content for their paid subscribers, or whether they wish to keep everything open. Most creators publish part of their content for free, and offer premium content for paid subscribers.
What you can expect with Letter from Iceland
I will be turning on paid subscriptions for anyone who would like to offer their support, but for now, all content will be open and free for all to access. At some time in the future I may offer exclusive content for paid subscribers, but rest assured that there will always be something for free subscribers as well.
I don’t foresee this publication replacing my Facebook and Instagram activities, but I do foresee spending most of my time and energy creating content in this space, as opposed to on social. I am looking forward to using this Substack for meaningful (and fun) posts about Iceland and Icelandic society, and fostering conversations around that.
Previously I sent out a newsletter once a month, but this will be more than that—perhaps once or twice a week. I have a lot of fun ideas about how to use this platform, including using audio in my posts, but am also realistic about how much I can accomplish given other demands on my time, so no promises! But I will say that I am committed.
If you are subscribed to my mailing list and the weekly or twice-weekly email notifications get a bit too much for you, do remember that you can turn off email notifications and only receive them in the app.
Thanks for being here, I’m so glad to have you along on this journey. 🥰 If you are not subscribed already, feel free to hit the button below. Also feel free to share this post with anyone you think may be interested.
Let’s do this!
Excited to continue to read your work here!
Great to read and *hear* you read your words. Looking forward to more ~ Carolyn