Be About It Press, now in newsletter form
We're trying something new because why not?
Be About It Press has a newsletter now, and we hope you’ll want to read it.
We got this idea from a scammer
Be About It Press has been around since 2010, mostly in print. We’ve dipped our toes into various forms of being online along the way, from Scribd to Tumblr to our own retail website, but we’re still trying to find the perfect place on the web to showcase the writers and artists we admire and respect.
Recently, our editor got an idea to make a Substack newsletter after reading a post from
about some scammy literary dude (imagine!) who charges reading fees for submissions and then just doesn’t respond to the hopeful writers who send him money. Obviously, that guy sucks, scammers always suck, but as Tuch noted in the article it is a new trend to run a lit mag on Substack and we agreed it could be a fun way to broaden the audience of our print zine by sending it to your email inbox.By the way, Be About It Press has never charged reading fees, nor will we ever. We operate at a loss most of the time, to be quite honest. Everything we do at Be About It is because we love doing it.
1. Why this, why now
I’m just going to go ahead and use the template provided by Substack for this first post because it’s currently past my bedtime, I’m writing this with a sleeping infant inches away from me, and I don’t have time or the brain space to be super creative about this post. I am also suddenly typing in first person. Anyway. I think it would be fun and cool to use Substack to send fans of Be About It new poetry and literary news and other things like reviews? critiques? essays on the state of zine making in the 21st century? photos from events? there’s a bounty of opportunity here. Because subscribers get an email for every new post, it feels more personal and intentional than hoping someone who cares will see a link I drop somewhere on social media in an endless sea of content.
2. What kind of community are you looking to build here
Be About It Press wants you. We love weirdness and nonconformity and we love finding poetry out in the wild, out in the random, accidentally and by chance. We think you’re funny. We think it would be tight to have a party where we can all share some new work and make each other laugh (or cry). We want to encourage writers and artists who might otherwise feel looked over. We know how that feels. We see you.
3. Be specific
If you decide to subscribe to Be About It Press (and why not? you’ve already read this much! it’s free, of course, unless you decide to donate to us, in which case thank you!) you should expect to see posts from us when we have new work to share and when we feel like talking about something.
That’s vague, I know. I hope to send you nice little emails somewhat regularly, but our editor in chief is taking care of a newborn and time feels unreal and committing to a posting schedule seems a bit unreasonable.
I do want to say, though, I would like to start publishing our print zines online, as a newsletter, in addition to the limited print runs that we do. So, please stay tuned for more on that.
I appreciate you reading this much. This is a new way for me to think about the press, and I’m still figuring out how I want to do it, but I’m willing to give it a go and try something new. It would be sweet if you joined me on this adventure.