Sunday Mailbag: Why the Switch?

Q: Why the switch to a newsletter from your blog? I’ve made your blog a daily stop for a long time, and while I’ve subscribed to your newsletter I’ll miss visiting here to see what you’ve posted today. There’s a kind of cool connection knowing you’ve posted THAT DAY, rather than reading a newsletter you probably put together over a few days. It’s more of a personal connection, if you understand that. Anyway I’ll miss the blog.

A: I addressed that pretty thoroughly (I think) in my announcement on Friday. The short version is I’m not reaching a growing audience via the blog or socials anymore, so I’d like to reward my loyal audience with exclusive content, features and first looks via a direct and private newsletter instead.

That said, the blog is not going away. I’ll still post a few times a week. I’m planning to continue to post the “Monday MADness” feature looking back at my work at MAD. I’m only about 30% through my all my MAD stuff, so I’ve got about two more years of that weekly feature. There will always be a “Sketch o’the Week” on Wednesday, although blog readers will be seeing sketches that were featured on “The Ink Stained Wretch” a few weeks earlier. Likewise the “Sunday Mailbag” will still be a feature here as long as I get questions from people.

Really the big difference now is that I only be posting regularly on Mondays, Wednesday and Sundays, and the posts I do will often be stuff I’ve already shared with my subscribers in the newsletter. I will post breaking news here and anything that is of a timely nature, which could happen at any time. There will still be plenty of content on Tom’s Mad Blog if you really are adverse to subscribing to the newsletter.

I get the notion that a daily interaction makes it seem like a more personal touch. I’ll still be doing twitter and Instragram, which are more direct “of the moment” interactions. Full disclosure: my blog posts have always been written as time permits, and not moments before they are posted. They only appear daily, and are not necessarily created daily. The newsletter is really just a digest version of the blog, although I intend to write a real article about something in each one, as well as have some sneak peeks at upcoming pieces that I wouldn’t want to post publicly. All too often my blog posts are quick things just to get something up. The stuff in “The Ink Stained Wretch” will be a little meatier than that. No matter if you subscribe or just keep visiting here now and again, thanks for following along!

Thanks to G Jonen for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about  cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!