Dear Reader: One-Month Progress Update

Tldr: November was great for Content; December will be great for Growth.

Dear Reader,

Thank you so much for your continued support over the past month. It is hard to believe that we started this substack on October 29th, but here we are. 

I wanted to give you all a little bit of a progress report as well as tell you where we are going for the next few weeks.

Successes 

I would like to begin by saying that this month has been an unequivocal success across all metrics. 

Subscribers

We added 49 subscribers, 10 of whom are paid (And a special thank you to everyone who has paid and all of our Founding Members. Your financial support has been crucial in these early weeks). 

We missed our goal of 50 new subscribers by 1, but I am hopeful that we can get there by the end of the day. 

Next month, our goal is to double our subscribership to 100 free and 20 paid subscribers. 

Publications

Since October 29th, we have published over 30 different pieces, including more than 15 new essays and 5 new poems. 

For me personally, this has been the most productive month of my life by far. I am averaging about 1500 words a day, which translates to roughly 4-5 essays and poems a week, for a total of 25775 words. (And I’m only writing part-time :)

At this rate, I’ll have a fully developed collection of essays and poems by the end of Passover.

I am currently compiling the essays chronologically, but if someone has any thoughts about how they should be organized, I would love your feedback. 

Areas for Improvement

If content production was our greatest success in October, then subscriber acquisition was our greatest weakness. 

With less than 10 exceptions, all of our subscribers heard about us through direct word of mouth. This was great for building momentum, but now we need to transition and find new ways of acquiring subscribers. 

I am open to any and all ideas about this; I am a poet not a salesman. 

Additionally, the organization and scheduling of essays could be better. I often want to publish as soon as I finish writing, but all of the essays benefit from a second-reading, pictures, and hyperlinks. 

Next Steps 

Our next step is growth. 

We finally got the business cards in today, which is very exciting because we now have something physical to give to people. 

Social Media 

This month, I am hoping to find someone to run the Social Media pages for IT IS NO DREAM. I have very little expertise there, but social media is the best way to reach people. 

I am looking for someone to run an instagram and twitter page for us, and I would be willing to work out a commission system based on however many new readers they bring in.

Poetry Readings 

I’ve been getting really positive feedback about the poetry recently, and I am going to try to host a few poetry readings this month. 

I am currently compiling a new zine with all of the Post-October 7th work, which should hopefully be done by this weekend. 

I have been looking for larger organizations to host these readings and potentially publish my work, so if you know anyone or any organization that could help with that, please let me know. 

New Work 

I have been working on three very important pieces for the past few days, and I am hoping to release them sometime next week. 

The first piece is called, “The Battle for Princeton: I Come to Bury Princeton, Not to Save It.” This essay is a response to an open letter written by a former professor of mine. Long-term, this piece will be added to a collection of essays about antisemitism and academia in America.  

The next piece is called, “Philandering Prophets,” and it’s about the problems with social leaders who commit adultery. The essay was inspired by a piece in Forbes called, “Why Cornel West is Broke,” which paints an alarming picture of an American academic with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt and a long history of affairs and love children. This piece will eventually be added to a collection about clay-footed American idols whose rhetoric poisoned our national discourse. 

The third piece I’ve been working on is much more of a pet–project of mine, and it’s an idea I’ve been working on for years. It’s called, “The End of Exile: A Vision for Jewish Unity and a Renewed Zionism.” This piece is a follow-up to “Dear Reader, It is No Dream,” and it will lay out my vision for what Zionism could look like moving forward from October 7th. 

Lastly, I will also be trying to put together an essay about the history of Chanukkah and why antizionists are not allowed to celebrate this year, so look for that to come out some time next week. 

Seeking Advice 

The last thing I wanted to ask in this monthly update is for advice about this amazon affiliate link. Anytime someone makes an amazon purchase from this link, whatever it is they buy, I get a small percentage of the sale. 

I would love to promote this link this month as I feel like people will be making a lot of amazon orders, but I feel like no one ever sees the link in the essays or, if they do, it looks bad. 

Or maybe I should get rid of it all together? 

I am seeking your advice 

And don’t forget to read my Christmas/Amazon poem here if you haven’t yet. 

Spread love, 

Spread light, 

I’ll see you again next week.