Anniversary

Two Years of Long Library

It’s been two years to the day since I posted my first proper piece to Long Library. It was a step I’d been contemplating for some time, increasingly convinced that there might be an audience for the kind of writing I wanted to do, even where it was out of step with the kind of writing most film publications (understandably) prefer to print. I wanted, put simply, to write solely about films (or books, etc.) that interested me, new or old, fashionable or obscure; I wanted to write pieces that juxtaposed works and put them in conversation with one another, even at risk of drawing unintuitive connections or limiting my reach; I wanted to write without regard for word limits or house styles. I’d been around long enough, and writing long enough, to know that any attempt on my part to connect with a readership on terms other than these would be doomed to failure, of one kind or another. If I couldn’t do it my way, I reasoned, there was no point trying to do it at all.

It’s hard to express how thrilled I’ve been with the growth of this publication. There are about fifteen hundred of you now, which is perhaps not a very impressive number in the broader Substack landscape but feels enormous to me as a readership for a newsletter which has steadfastly refused to develop a consistent focus. I’ve written multiple times about bleak 60s westerns, I’ve written about horror, I’ve written about Jane Austen. That every post has connected me with more readers rather than fewer is a fact that never ceases to shock me, or to fill me with gratitude. My writing here has even opened up opportunities to publish work elsewhere (and I hope you take my periodic updates on these opportunities as expressions of thanks to you for making them possible). In short, I have the thing every writer desperately wants, and these days fewer and fewer of us ever get: the knowledge that if I want to write about something, no matter what it is, some nonzero number of people will actually read it. I was old enough before getting this that I will never, ever take it for granted; I’m enormously grateful to you all.

I have not really succeeded in making Long Library a major source of income, a fact which has not surprised or disturbed me. Frankly, I’ve done absolutely none of the things you are supposed to do in order to cultivate a large paid subscriber base: I’ve never maintained a strict schedule; I’ve seldom, after that first post, written especially timely or topical pieces; I’ve never paywalled content. And to be honest, I'm not sure I'm in a position to change any of these things in the near term; my first goal has always been to grow my readership, not restrict it, and I write here about as often as my current circumstances permit (though summer will now bring greater freedom). But it is a fact that my ambitions for this newsletter are greater than the current reality, that I would like to spend much more time here and produce much more work of many different kinds, and that the more I can make Long Library work as a paying concern the more time and energy I can dedicate to it. With that in mind, if you’ve enjoyed my work so far, would like to see more of it in the future, and think it is comfortably within your means, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. I'd love to take this as far as we all can go.

Thank you all again, my friends, and more from me soon.