my year in ____

some numbers for ya

Newsletter

I was really hoping that Substack would do some sort of “Substack Wrapped” that would save me from trying to do this myself and look at a dreaded Number… but I think they aren’t coming to save me. Here’s last year’s, which ended at November 30, 2023.

Between December 2023 and November 30, 2023, I wrote a 135 posts. My numbers of both unpaid and paid subscribers went up:

November 2023

2332 total subscribers
160 paid subscribers (6.8% of total)

And here’s… November 30, 2024.

November 2024

5354 total subscribers
251 paid subscribers¹ (4.7% of total)

So unpaid subscriptions a little more than doubled and paid subscriptions a little less than doubled.

The most read post was:

a (very) qualified defense of "ironic misandry"

This garnered ~9.72k views. Why this one was the most read is kind of obvious: it was discourse-y. On the other hand, among subscribers, it performed about as well as everything else (around half of you opened it).

The least read posts were… technically all paywalled perfume posts, but to even the playing field a little I took them out. So I think the actual least read post was this one:

take it from the top

This was viewed by ~2.41k people. However, again, among subscribers, about half of you opened it. This is consistent with last year’s least-read post in indicating that The People do not want me to go long on old movies they don’t care about. However, I probably will do this again. I can’t be tamed!!!

The big shock of looking at the numbers on this though is that the Evangelion posts are really, really popular… compared to what I thought. I literally went on a podcast recently and said I was sure only about a hundred people were reading them. I really did think this! And… uh…

What the hell??

In general, the open rate has dropped a bit this year. As you can see with the Evangelion posts, it doesn’t generally go below 40% but it’s not reliably hitting 50% anymore. I don’t love this and may try to figure out how to write things like “subject lines that tell you what the post is about” to make sure that this number is accurately reflecting interest. If it is that’s fine but if it’s not that not.

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Writing

Last year I set a goal of publishing twelve pieces at places that were not this Substack. I… did not do this! I published [ten]:

• “Anne Elliot Is Twenty-Seven,” The Paris Review

• “I Will Never Abandon My Special Little Drink,” Defector

• “The Case for (Temporary) Celibacy,” The New York Times

• “Ursula K. Le Guin was her own toughest (and best) critic,” The Washington Post

• “I Was Still The Person On The Outside,” Tracks on Tracks

• “A lost classic for fans of Renata Adler and Elizabeth Hardwick,” The Washington Post

• “The Taylor Swift Endorsement Fantasy,” The New York Times

• “Sally Rooney Deserves Better Than This,” The New York Times

• “‘Intermezzo’ Review: Sibling Rivalry From Sally Rooney,” The Wall Street Journal

• “Fossil Record,” The Lamp

I don’t feel too bad about this, but I do feel a little bad. It would have been better to hit twelve, obviously, and if certain things had either come through or I’d been a little more on top of things, I would have. But they didn’t and I didn’t. So that’s frustrating. However, toward the end of the year I made the decision to start saying no to people because I was “writing my book proposal” and I knew that meant I wouldn’t hit my goal. I think that was the right decision and I don’t regret it.

That said, the other thing I really wanted to have done by this time in the year was: I wanted to have not only completed “my book proposal” but sold “my book proposal.” Ha ha. Ha ha ha!!!!!!!!! HA HA[static]

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Miscellaneous Numbers

I watched ~54 movies, read ~133 books, and tried ~179 perfumes. All numbers will probably go up slightly by the end of the year.

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Next Year

• Once again, I’m going to set a goal of 12 pieces published in places that are not this Substack. Even if I fail it again, I think it’s a good goal.

• I’ve decided that two projects for the first part of the year are going to be “learning how to appreciate graphic novels and comic books” and “improving my grasp on prosody.” Appreciating Form 2025!

• I will sell my book.

1. The full number is a bit higher but I’m subtracting out comps and gifts. There were not that many of those in 2023, so I didn’t think to subtract them, but since then I started doing the subscription donation drives etc.