Drezner's World Is Two Years Old!

I guess this newsletter thing might have some legs.

Photo by Adnan Pervaiz on Unsplash

Drezner’s World is now two years old! To be honest I am somewhat surprised by that sentence. I remember thinking in the summer of 2022 that I was starting a newsletter right when everyone was predicting the newsletter bubble was about to pop. And maybe it has — but not for my purposes. Unlike, say, Matthew Yglesias, writing Drezner’s World is not my primary activity and/or source of income. As when I was writing for Foreign Policy and the Washington Post, this has always been my side hustle.

I suppose I should have deep thoughts about the state of my Substack on such an anniversary, but I just reviewed what I said on my first anniversary and a lot of what I wrote then still holds up.

Has anything changed? Let’s see what I said a year ago….

1. “I think I got the rhythm of this thing now!” Yes, that still holds. I moved down the learning curve even more during year two.

2. “After just a year of doing this, I have more than 6,500 subscribers and nearly 400 paid subscribers.” Well, now it’s over 13,500 subscribers and 625 paid subscribers. Hooray!

3. “I occasionally miss my copy-editors.” Yes, this still very much holds.

4. “The money is good here! The exposure… less good!” On the income side, I suppose in a perfect world I would like the paid-to-unpaid ratio to go up a little, so I guess that might mean more dog-related content and other posts exclusive to paid subscribers. Honestly, though, I am now earning a fair amount more than what the Washington Post was paying me for Spoiler Alerts. That was my primary fiduciary goal and it was achieved in year two. As for the exposure, well, that seems to have gone up as well in year two. It says something that this December newsletter wound up appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education with only some minor editing.

5. Substack has some upsides and downsides. Very much still true!

I have no idea what Year Three will look like, except for the next fifty days or so. Because it’s the single most important international relations event for the rest of 2024, the primary focus of Drezner’s World for the next two months will be the U.S. election. I do apologize for those subscribers who want more international relations commentary. That will come in due course, but any election season that can produce this story and this story and this story and this story is too wildly entertaining for the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World to ignore.