Note: This is long-since solved, but leaving the page up for context, since many sites linked to it. -rc
I’ve given up trying to work with Yahoo, which represents the largest domain subscribed to True. There are more than 20,000 addresses within the Yahoo.com domain on True’s distribution (plus a couple thousand more on variants such as yahoo.co.uk, yahoo.ca, etc.)
If you made it to this page after reading about This is True in Playboy, you’ve at least proven that you do read the articles! This is True is the thinking person’s humor publication, just as Playboy might be considered the thinking person’s men’s magazine. I humbly believe Playboy agrees, since This is True and/or I have now been featured in their pages four five six times (no pictures, thankfully).
Felix in California sent me an error report Monday (I left a confusing extraneous word after recasting a sentence when I was writing). He posted the error just 11 minutes and 44 seconds after the Premium edition was sent out, and his report enabled me to fix the error for the free edition.
Hey, look at this! Only 14 years after I put it into practice, WIRED magazine’s Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail) has fully grasped my business model: making money by giving away something of value for free.
Verizon subscribers have had quite the go of it the past few weeks. Three weeks ago their spam filter tripped on a single word in the issue, so the Premium edition was blocked from everyone at Verizon (and their subsidiaries, like GTE.net) — even if you had followed my recommendation and put thisistrue.com and lyris.net aweber.com in your personal “whitelist.”
I ran three letters in tonight’s issue that finally solves something that has perplexed me for years. (The meat is in the third one, but the first two lay the groundwork.)
This is the favorite interview I’ve ever done, for a now-defunct pop-culture magazine. To keep it available, the author gave me permission to post it here. -rc
We’ve been totally swamped lately. It wasn’t just the GOOHF water bottles, which were extremely popular and the huge quantity we were able to get sold out in about a month (but sorry: we really can’t get any more, since the manufacturer discontinued them — figures!).
Today I got a copy of the new book Be Unreasonable: the Unconventional Way to Extraordinary Business Results by small business coach Paul Lemberg. In the book, Lemberg uses me and True as an example of starting a business in an “unreasonable” way (in his chapter on “Unreasonable Thinking”).
I’ve been working on an idea since last Fall, and it’s finally just about ready. It would have been ready this evening, except this is a holiday weekend. But I can’t wait to let you know about what it is:
I started getting notes last month about whether I had “special plans” for issue #666. “Not that the number actually means anything, but it tickles me to have noticed the landmark,” noted one, Jordan in S.A., Australia.
Typically, around Christmastime, I send the Premium edition of True to the free edition readers.
Now and then a reader will write to say they’re outraged by a story — that it’s “not humorous.”
My conversational style brings lots of response from readers. Usually, that response is intelligent, thoughtful, and sometimes even very entertaining. Now and then, the response is stupid, ill-thought-out, and sometimes even very entertaining. While I obviously love the first kind, it’s a lot more fun to deal with the second type.
Some people even whine when I say maybe they wouldn’t like to upgrade. Really.
Here’s what I said in last week’s newsletter:
The 11 December issue was reruns from 1995 since I was down with the flu. One of those stories was this one (which dealt with trying to embarrass journalists into better writing so there aren’t so many errors in the paper). It was only the second “rerun column” ever in 11-1/2 years of weekly True issues.
I think it’s an obvious concept, but Richard in (I think) Connecticut writes:
After seeing my note from last week, and then seeing a paid ad for the Free State Project in True, Tim in New Hampshire wrote to complain:
This week’s issue marks a milestone: True’s Ten-Year Anniversary! It’s hard to believe it’s been 10 years, since I feel like I’m just getting started.
Free subscriptions. Free content for web sites with a new story every day. But for some people, it’s not enough: it pains me that some want more and more, and can’t abide by the simple rules in True’s Terms of Service in exchange for so much free stuff.