3,398 people signed up for a newsletter that did not exist

For years there has been a newsletter signup around here. First on the old link-in-bio page, then on this site. People typed their email into it. 3,398 people, in the end.

And I sent them nothing. Not one email.

The honest reason changed over time. At first I did not know what a newsletter should be. A woodworking newsletter felt wrong; woodworking is boring to read about. It is something you should see, and seeing it is what the videos are for.

But later the reason was simpler. I was scared. When you have been silent for years, the first email is not a message, it is a confession. Everyone on that list gets reminded, at the same second, that they once cared. Some of them will remember why. The rest will finally find the unsubscribe button. Every month I did not send it, the confession grew.

Yesterday I sent it anyway.

What I sent

The letter is called The Workshop Letter, and it is not about woodworking. It is about everything around it: I am going to run my business in public. The money, the doubts, the deals, the mistakes. The first one had section titles like "AI ate the how-to video", "A barbershop desk full of nails", "A dead barn and a stubborn plan" and "The video that might burn a bridge". There was also an offer: if readers want my full monthly numbers, income and all, they reply and say so, and I publish them.

Then I pressed send on 3,398 emails and went to do something else with my hands.

What came back

I expected the unsubscribes. They came, about seventy of them, two percent of the list. That is the fair price of finally showing up, and honestly less than I feared.

What I did not expect was the inbox.

One reader explained that his whole family shares one YouTube login, so the algorithm barely knows he exists and rarely shows him my videos. The letter reaches him anyway. No algorithm in between, just an email.

One maker fed his project idea into the Storyteller Engine, one of the free tools, the same afternoon, and wrote that he might finally film the thing. Another told me about engraving leaves into the build plate of his brand-new 3D printer, which is the most maker sentence I have read all year.

The shortest reply was three lines long. I have read it more times than I will admit.

And one reader wrote that a film I made about letting go had helped him begin to part with things left behind by people he lost. I answered that one slowly.

Twenty minutes after the send, someone downloaded the cone lamp files. Two people signed up before the evening was over.

Years of silence, and it took one afternoon of replies to understand the mistake. The mistake was never the imperfect newsletter. The mistake was the silence.

What happens now

The letter goes out about once a month. The next one will probably carry my full numbers: one reader has voted yes and nobody has voted no, which is either democracy or a very quiet room. It will also have a photo in it. My daughter reviewed the first issue, and her feedback was that words alone are not enough. She is right.

If you want in: jespermakes.com/newsletter. New subscribers get the starter kit the second they sign up, the best of the free tools and films in one email. And you can reply to any letter. It lands in my actual inbox, and after this week I answer with more confidence than ever.

The part I keep relearning

In the workshop, the projects that never get built are the ones waiting for the perfect design. I know this. I say it in videos. And still I sat on a newsletter for years, waiting for the perfect shape and calling the fear patience.

The letter I sent is not perfect. It is a workbench, not a monument. But it exists, and the replies are already standing on it.

The writing was just the part I could send.