In 2017, I decided to start a newsletter. I named it Sticks & Stones after the childhood chant “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Of course, words can and do hurt, and are far more powerful than mere sticks and stones, but I’ve always liked that phrase and so it became the title of the newsletter.
I did some research before I started the newsletter. I found Margo Aaron’s “How to Write Newsletters That People Want to Read,” where I encountered this discouraging sentence: “Every company with internet access has attempted the newsletter and failed miserably, boasting open rates that are lucky to hit 17%.”
According to Margo Aaron, in order for a newsletter to be successful, it must be extremely specific. It must appeal to a niche audience. I wanted Sticks & Stones to be unique, useful, and interesting. What could I offer my subscribers that they would value enough to keep reading?
I asked myself what I liked reading. Well, poetry, obviously. Part of reading and writing poems involves being part of the conversation around the art form: sharing poems with friends, recommending books, and reading reviews. The poetry community is definitely a niche audience, but I wanted the newsletter to appeal to readers as well as writers. That’s when I hit on the idea of writing a review for every issue.
I immersed myself in the book-reviewing craft, reviewing two, and sometimes three, books a month. As I read and wrote, I developed what I call an “exploratory” approach to reviewing, which I wrote about here. I must have touched a nerve, as that particular blog post is, by far, the most popular one I’ve ever written.
My goal as a reviewer has not changed. As I wrote in an interview on Trish Hopkinson’s blog in December of 2017, “I read deeply, with the eye of a treasure-hunter…for me, poetry never gets old.” And in the same interview: “Assembling a book of poems is no easy job; it takes years of writing the poems and then ordering them into a narrative. Then come untold numbers of rejections, and then the final triumph of publication. A review honors that cycle.”
The first issue of Sticks & Stones, featuring a review of Jenene Ravesloot’s poetry collection Sliders, was delivered to 700 subscribers on January 1, 2018. It had a decent open rate of 36%, and I received a flurry of positive comments as well as the expected unsubscribes. Readership grew quickly in the first several months, and then stabilized. After the first year, I went through the subscribers list and deleted anyone who hadn’t opened the newsletter in the last few months. That decreased the subscriber list to its current number of around 500 (the number fluctuates monthly). The open rate is about 40%.
Subscribers read Sticks & Stones at a higher rate than visitors to my blog read my posts. I also receive more feedback, in the form of emails, than comments on my blog. The poets I’ve reviewed are extremely gracious. They always thank me and usually share the newsletter with their contacts. In this way, the newsletter reaches an even wider audience.
Writing the newsletter each month is a labor of love, requiring many hours of reading, writing, and revising. But the time I’ve spent on it has been well worth it. I’ve read forty-five books of poetry, books that have affected me deeply, and I’ve contributed to the conversation around poetry.
After almost three years, Sticks & Stones has been read and shared thousands of times. I’m glad I decided to start writing it, and I plan to keep going in the future.
A few things have changed since I started Sticks & Stones in 2017:
- The newsletter is now once a month instead of twice a month.
- “What I’m Reading” is gone.
- “The Reading Life” includes short essays about the process of reading as well as book lists.
- “A Closer Look” appears several times a year and features in-depth interviews with poets and publishers.
- Reviews are longer than the original 500 words.
- I link to my most current blog post.
Coming in 2021: I’m creating a short course on how to write reviews, which will be available first to my subscribers.
Subscriptions to Sticks & Stones are free. Sign up here. Thank you!
Do you have something say about poetry? An essay on being a poet, tips for poets, or poetry you love? TrishHopkinson.com is now accepting pitches for guest blog posts.
Contact me here if you are interested!
