Welcome to Japan Art Islands
Hello everyone,
If you're reading this, you probably already know what's happening. Maybe you read my recent Setouchi Explorer blog post mentioning the creation of this newsletter and signed up. Maybe you're a long time subscriber and I just imported your email from either my old newsletter or my blog's suscriber list.
In any case, welcome!
Here's what's happening in a little more detail.
On the one hand, I've wanted to test Ghost for a while now, so this is exactly what I'm doing right now (this is the platform managing this newsletter, a bit like Wordpress for my blog if you want). Also, if you've read my new year's Setouchi Explorer blog post (check the link if necessary) you know that I'm trying to make my writing and blogging, if not financially profitable, at least not financially costly (which it is at the moment) and also, I'm a bit tired of having big blogs and famous sites using me as a source,without ever giving me credit. It happens more than you'd think.
Finally, there's also the problem of LLMs (I refuse to call them AI) stealing content from all over the web these days.
So, one way, I want to experiment this year is coupling my blog with a newsletter.
First, I like the idea of a newsletter to speak more directly to readers (and you may know that I already experimented with this before). Also, the idea would be to publish certain things (especially those pertaining to the Setouchi Triennale 2025) here first, making them available to subscribers only, and only publishing them on my blog later, as an archive.
Financially speaking, there is a free option, of course. However, not all content will be available to free subscribers (I've tried to avoid this situation for years, but I unfortunately have to resort to it for now). So, there are paying options. I'm not totally sure what rates are better. I started with 2€, 5€ and 10€ monthly. Unless you're rich, it may be asking a lot for my blog (especially when I can't write a lot for several weeks - well, if I get paying subscribers, it'll be some good motivation to write more often).
I think subscribers are allowed to comment (I'm still learning the ropes with the Ghost platform), so tell me what monthly rate would be one you'd be more willing to pay and why?
I guess that's all for now. More to come very soon, hopefully.
As always, thanks for reading and stay tuned for more.
All the best,
David