Changes: FBTB Newsletter

What FBTB will look like moving forward, paid v. free, and new kinds of content.

In February, I will have been writing this newsletter for two years. Many of you are longtime readers from my blogging days when I wrote on the Google Blogspot platform, but we have also expanded to many new subscribers. It has been fun to grow the From Berkshire to Buckingham circle and have this space to continue royal watching together across some very turbulent years for the British royals.

When I launched this Substack, I said I would guarantee one newsletter a month—thousands of you subscribed for that alone, and I want to sincerely thank you. You truly launched (or relaunched) From Berkshire to Buckingham. Obviously, in terms of content volume, a lot has changed since then, and that is why I am writing today.

This Substack has evolved significantly from those first few months, and I think it is time to formalize that change. For most of this newsletter’s two years, I have been writing more than one post a month. Recently, I have been operating on a schedule of one free post a week and one paid post a week. This is in line with “industry standards,” (aka other Substack accounts with similar stats to this one). In addition to those weekly posts, I also publish the monthly newsletter on the last (or first!) day of the month.

Moving forward, I am going to continue on with two posts a week, and I would like to experiment with a third “bonus post” as time allows.

I enjoy the monthly newsletter round-up; I like looking back and getting a big picture on the royal month. I am going to continue to publish the monthly newsletter, but moving forward, the newsletter will not necessarily be published on the last (or first) day of the month.

Since the end of the month could be a Tuesday or a Sunday or a Friday, etc., it has become chaotic for me to hit that moving target. In the future, I will publish the end of the month newsletter on a day close to the change of the months that makes the most sense.

Whereas the monthly newsletter has been paywalled every month, moving forward, the newsletter will be free content, while many of the posts throughout the rest of the month are paywalled.

The final question…is there an interest in short posts about other royals—other British royals and even foreign royals? The Duchess of Edinburgh, Princess Beatrice, Queen Letizia, etc. My thought has been to add an occasional bonus post (as mentioned above) on the fashion of some of the other royal ladies.

So, the recap is that after working on various schedules, I am settling into two posts a week, plus a bonus post that I am going to test out. The newsletter won’t be hitting your inbox on the exact last day of every month, but it will make it to you around the end of one month or the start of the next. Whereas the newsletter has always been paywalled, it will now be a post that is free to all. I will be playing with the balance between paid and free to make sure paid subscribers are getting their money’s worth and free subscribers are still getting some content—the monthly newsletter and the occasional free post in addition to the newsletter.

Please let me know if you have questions, and remember that if you have a problem with your subscription, it is always best to email me rather than send a DM on Instagram. The volume on Instagram combined with the inability to search messages, means your question or concern could get lost in the shuffle.

And, as always, thank you so very much for being here! Here is to another year of royal watching together.