Paid Membership Program

Hi, I'm Nat Bennett. I write a lot, mostly newsletters.

For the last few years, alongside Simpler Machines and Mere Being, I've been writing pop-up newsletters – coruscant little bursts of writing, daily or near daily, that were accessible while I was writing them, and then vanished. I've made five of them so far.

Walking in Oakland – Thirty-one days of photographs and short essays from a month in October when I didn't have a car and was walking everywhere. Personal memoir, things my dog fears, photographers I admire, California's seasons, a lot of Halloween decorations.

Nomad Exquisite – Sixty issues, mostly just photographs, taken during and just after a move from Oakland to Berkeley with a road trip to Colorado in between. Lots of dramatic late-afternoon light.

Point Lobos – Four issues made walking 20,000 steps per day at Point Lobos, the most beautiful place on planet earth. Largely an experiment in, "Can I walk, photograph, and write this much?" Several of my favorite photographs I've ever made.

A Walk Around the Bay – My most ambitious project, a walk from Berkeley to San Francisco through Sausalito and Tiburon, over about five days. (It was going to be a complete circuit, but, well, read it to find out what happened instead.)

Pivots – 30 days of 500+ word snippets about Pivotal, the strange little software company where I spent the most formative five years of my career.

These pieces are much more personal than what I publish on the main newsletter. Sometimes this is because they're less finished, sometimes it's because of the subject matter – the Pivotal stuff, for instance, is really prone to being misread by people who didn't experience it or haven't read a lot of my work, and some of the Walk Around the Bay pieces touch on suicide. I want these pieces read by people who have some context about me and are reading on purpose, not just because it's what happened to be served up that day by e.g. Hacker News.

But! Many of you were not here when I sent them in the first place, or have cleaned out your inboxes since then. So there are folks who do have context and I do want to have access to these letters who can't read them.

So, I'm starting a paid membership, and members will get access to the archives of the pop-up newsletters. The Point Lobos issues are up on the site today. Starting on June 3rd, I'm going to release one issue from the other four every day, for about three and a half months. So, if you sign up now you'll get the original experience: A new pop-up newsletter in your inbox every morning.

Going forward, the membership funds the work, most of which will stay free. Mere Being, Simpler Machines, and Good Rectangles will stay open. New pop-up newsletters will go out to anyone who signs up specifically for them in real-time, and then into the archive afterwards. When I publish prints or physical objects, members will get substantial discounts. Paid members will also probably get the occasional members-only note.

I'm largely yoinking this model from Craig Mod, where the idea is that paid members aren't paying for exclusive access so much as paying for the writing to exist. I share his fear of the membership program taking over the work, and I think his solution of gating mostly drafts, progress notes, and other "sawdust" kicked off by the work itself is an elegant one. I also love the idea of members providing "permission."

And if you've read this far, you've probably been reading me for a while, so: Thank you. I'm one of those people who kind of has to write a lot to feel "right," but I also basically can't write without an audience. So I really appreciate you being here.