I’ve been using Substack for the past few months to send out a monthly How to Japanese newsletter. It’s basically a mini version of my Japan Times column, a little something on beer or booze, and a collection of links/thoughts at the bottom. You can see more about my thinking behind the newsletter in the first issue.

I’m not familiar with Constant Contact or MailChimp or other newsletter services, so I don’t have anything in the way of comparison, but I do like Substack’s features and the way it looks. It took me a second to figure out how to edit the url slug (a feature which I think they’ve added in the past few months; it’s in the “Settings” down near the “Publish” button), but other than that, the only feature I wish they’d add is a template feature. I solved this issue by creating a template draft and just always keep it as a draft.

When I start a new month I just copy and paste the template over into the next month’s issue.