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NewsletterBook

You’ve written a book’s worth of newsletters. Where’s the book?

NewsletterBook turns a newsletter archive into a book: the issues worth keeping, grouped by theme rather than date, each one exactly as you wrote it, with nothing rephrased. We propose the structure, you approve it, and the book comes back to you privately. You wrote it. We find the book inside it.

Book a half-hour callSee everything you get

One book, up to 150 issues

$3,499

Published on Leanpub and on Amazon: a Kindle ebook, a 6 × 9 paperback and a 7 × 10 hardcover

Your book comes back privately, with zero human editing of your words. Publish it as it is, or change anything you like first.

A NewsletterBook

The Collected Issues

Your name on the spine

The service

Do you write a newsletter?

Not the kind that forwards links. The kind where you sit down every week and work something out in public, and people reply. You have done that a hundred times, or three hundred. Somewhere in that archive is the best thing you have ever written, and a reader who found you last month will never see it, because it is issue 41 and the archive page stops at the newest twenty.

Every newsletter writer knows which issues those are. The one that got forwarded for a year. The one people still quote back to you. The three that, read together, say the thing you have been circling for a decade. They are a book. They are just filed by date.

A newsletter is read once, on the morning it arrives. A book is read for years.

The shelf

You already know what this book feels like

Paul Graham’s essays went out one at a time to whoever was reading his site. Collected, they became Hackers & Painters, which is the book that sent a generation of programmers to start companies. Seth Godin’s daily posts became a shelf of books, starting with a collection of the posts themselves. Montaigne invented the essay by writing a few pages at a time and binding them later.

The form is old and it works. Short pieces, written when the thought was hot, arranged afterwards by someone who can see the whole. The arranging is the part a writer never gets to, because the next issue is due on Tuesday.

Your newsletter is already that book. It is just sorted by date.

The problem

An archive is not a book

An archive is a pile, sorted by the one thing that does not matter: when you hit send. The issue about pricing sits between an issue about your holiday and an issue about a conference that happened in 2022. Every one of them ends with a subscribe button and a footer about managing your preferences.

A reader who wants to know what you think about pricing has to know that issue exists, and then find it. Most never do. The archive is where your best work goes to be unread.

A book is sorted by meaning. The pricing issues sit together, in the order that builds the argument. The holiday issue is gone, and so is the conference, and so are the buttons. The reader gets your thinking in the order it makes sense, not the order it happened.

The Engineering Room

The Engineering Room by David Farley, from $12.99

The proof

Read the one we made from a podcast

NewsletterBook is PodcastBook’s workflow pointed at a written archive. Dave Farley hosts The Engineering Room, long conversations with the people who shaped how software gets built, and we turned thirty-eight of them into a book he published under his name. It is the book that workflow made, to these rules, start to finish.

Read a chapter or three. The chapter titles, the standfirsts, the way a body of work reads once someone has arranged it: that is what NewsletterBook makes from your archive. The first NewsletterBook will take its place on this page when it is published.

Read The Engineering Room

The book

Curated to read, faithful to every issue

Every writer wants two things that pull against each other: the issues exactly as they went out, and a book that reads as a whole. NewsletterBook gives you the second without touching the first.

What goes. The dated issues, the housekeeping, the one that was only ever a link to someone else, the subscribe buttons, the share blocks, the footers. Whole issues are cut or kept; nothing inside an issue is rewritten.

What never changes. Your words. We never rephrase a sentence, never tighten a paragraph, never put a cleaner phrase in your mouth. If an issue was right in 2021 and the world has moved since, the standfirst says when it went out and the issue stands as written.

What gets added. A structure: parts and chapters by theme, in an order that builds. A standfirst on every chapter with the original title, the date it went out, and one line of context. An opening note in your voice, drafted from the plan and the newsletter’s about page, which you rewrite or sign. Then the whole book typeset properly: PDF, EPUB, the web, and a print-ready edition.

The result is the book your readers keep asking for, and the one you can sign without flinching, because every word in it is yours.

How it works

What we actually do

  1. You send us the export. Substack exports your whole archive in one click, posts and images included. WordPress, Blogger and most other platforms export too, and we will tell you where the button is.
  2. We catalogue every issue. Title, date, length, what it is about, whether it was paid-only, what images it carries.
  3. We propose the book. A title, parts and chapters grouped by theme, which issues are kept and which are cut and why, and a draft of the opening note. It comes to you as a plan you can read in an evening.
  4. You approve the plan, or change it. This is the one decision in the whole process that is yours alone: which issues, in what order, under what title. Move a chapter, rescue a cut, rename a part. When you say go, we build.
  5. We build the book from the issues, not from a copy of the archive. The subscribe buttons, the share blocks and the footers go. The images are placed as figures. Each chapter gets its standfirst.
  6. We never rephrase. This rule is built into the workflow. An issue is kept whole or cut whole. If you would write a sentence differently today, you can change it yourself afterwards; we will not.
  7. We typeset it properly. PDF, EPUB, the web, and a print-ready edition. The kind of object you can sign.
  8. We hand it back privately. Zero human editing of your words. No pressure, nobody waiting on you.
  9. You read it. Then publish it as it is, or make any edits you like yourself first: it is already a Leanpub book, so open it and start. Then we publish it on Amazon.

The curation and the build are done by the AI workflow that makes PodcastBook, pointed at an archive instead of a feed. People spent months testing that workflow on a real book, ruling on every kind of change it is allowed to make and every kind it is not. The one thing it never does is rewrite you.

What's included

What stays yours

  • Your name on the cover, and your copyright on the page behind it.
  • Your words, exactly as you sent them. Nothing rephrased, nothing tightened, nothing added inside an issue.
  • Every editorial call. Which issues, what order, what title. We propose a plan. You approve it, or change it until you do.
  • You choose your price. Sell on Leanpub from day one at Leanpub’s standard royalty (80% on sales of $7.99 and up, 80% minus 50 cents below that), and in print through Amazon.
  • Your book, privately. Nobody outside the room sees a page until you say so.
  • Your book to change. It is a Leanpub book from the day it lands. Cut a chapter, add a foreword, rewrite an issue you would write differently today. Or publish it exactly as it is.
  • Your newsletter, untouched. The book is a companion, not a replacement. Every chapter can point back to the issue it came from, and the last page can tell a reader where to subscribe.
Book a half-hour call

The price

The price

One book, published on Leanpub and on Amazon. You approve the plan, we build it, you publish it.

NewsletterBook

$3,499

for one book

Your book, published everywhere it should be.

  • A plan for the book, proposed by us and approved by you
  • Your book, built from the issues you kept, back privately
  • Published on Leanpub as PDF, EPUB and on the web, with a print-ready PDF
  • Published on Amazon as a Kindle ebook, a 6 × 9 paperback and a 7 × 10 hardcover
  • 10 free paperback copies
  • 5 free hardcover copies
  • You choose your price on Leanpub — 80% royalties on sales of $7.99 and up, 80% minus 50 cents on sales below $7.99

One book holds up to 150 issues or 150,000 words of kept text. A longer archive, or one with very long issues, becomes more than one book. Each additional book is $2,799, published on Amazon like the first. We will estimate the book count from the plan, before anything is built.

The fit

Who NewsletterBook is for

It is for a particular kind of newsletter, and the call is where we both find out whether yours is one.

  • You have written a hundred issues or more, and you would stand behind most of them today.
  • Your best issues are essays. Someone could read one cold, years later, and get something from it.
  • Your readers quote you back to you, forward issues to their friends, and ask when the book is coming.

It is not for you if your newsletter is mostly links and news. There is no book in a pile of links, and we would tell you so on the call.

Your part

What we need from you

You have already done the years of work. What is left is small, and it is yours alone to do.

TaskYour time
A Zoom call to start it30 minutes
The export of your archiveFive minutes. Substack exports everything in one click; we will show you where for anything else.
Reading the plan and saying yes, or changing itAn evening
A read of your bookYou wrote every word, so skim it or read it cover to cover; it is entirely up to you.
Telling us to publish it, or publishing it yourselfWhenever you are ready

Our side of it

We are creating this for your eyes only. Do what you want with it. It’s yours.

Frequently asked questions

Questions you should be asking

Is this just my posts stapled together?

Stapling is what the archive already does, by date. The work here is the part a writer never gets to: reading the whole body of work at once, finding the themes, choosing what belongs, putting it in an order that builds, and cutting the rest. Then the chrome goes, every chapter gets a standfirst, and the whole thing is typeset as a book. The words inside each issue are untouched, because they are yours.

Will you rewrite anything?

No. An issue is kept whole or cut whole, and the words inside a kept issue are exactly as you sent them. We write the standfirsts, which are the publisher’s layer, and we draft the opening note in your voice from the plan, which you rewrite or sign. If you would write an issue differently today, the book is yours to edit afterwards.

I’m not on Substack. Does that work?

Yes. Substack is the easiest, because its export is one click and includes the images. WordPress, Blogger, Ghost, Beehiiv, Buttondown and most others export too, and we will tell you where the button is on the call. If all you have is a folder of files, send the folder.

What about paid-only issues?

Your call, and the plan asks it. Some writers put the paid issues in, because the book is the thing a paying reader gets anyway. Some keep them out so the book is the free archive, bound. Either way the plan marks which issues were paid-only, so you decide with your eyes open.

My issues are full of links, embeds and images.

Images are placed as figures with their captions. A link stays a link in the ebook and becomes a footnote in print. An embedded tweet or video becomes the quoted text and a link to the original, because a book cannot play a video. An issue that is nothing but links is usually one of the cuts.

How long does it take?

The plan comes back within a week of the export landing. The book comes back within a week of your saying yes to the plan. Most of the elapsed time is yours, reading the plan.

What happens once the book comes back?

You read it. Publish it as it is, or make any edits you like yourself first: it is already a Leanpub book, so open it and start. Then we publish it on Amazon as a Kindle ebook, a 6 × 9 paperback and a 7 × 10 hardcover. We do no human editing of your words. The book is yours to change.

What does it cost?

NewsletterBook is $3,499: the plan, the book, published on Leanpub and on Amazon as a Kindle ebook, a 6 × 9 paperback and a 7 × 10 hardcover, with 10 free paperback copies and 5 free hardcover copies. One book holds up to 150 issues or 150,000 words of kept text. A longer archive becomes more than one book, and each additional book is $2,799.

What if I read it and don’t want it published?

Then nothing happens. The book was made for your eyes, and it stays that way. Nobody outside the room ever sees a page. We would still be glad we made it.

Can I use the book to grow the newsletter?

That is the best reason to make it. Give it to new subscribers. Sell it to people who have never heard of you and let the last page tell them where to subscribe. Excerpt it. Sign copies. Every chapter can carry a link back to the issue it came from.

Can I see one before I book a call?

The first NewsletterBook is being made now. Until it is published, read The Engineering Room, the book the same workflow made from a podcast: the chapter titles, the standfirsts and the editing are what NewsletterBook makes from an archive.

It starts with a half-hour call

If you write the kind of newsletter this page describes, we are already readers, and we would love to do this. Book a half-hour Zoom call with us: we talk about the newsletter, what the book might be, and how to get us the export. The call is free and commits you to nothing. The plan comes back within a week of the export landing.

Book a half-hour call

Or just write to hello@leanpub.com.