PencilBooth

Around 18 months ago I launched PencilBooth - A simple idea based on a random domain name I bought ten years ago. As a huge fan of TinyLetter, the no-nonsense text-based newsletter service, I wanted to make the equivalent but for visual artists rather than writers. Of course, what started as a simple idea gained a small amount of user interest at which point I got hooked... Six months into our initial launch I decided I wanted to go all-in and see if PencilBooth could really be a thing. While newsletters continued to gain traction as a medium, they were still very much focussed on servicing writers or content-creators, and were growing in complexity to a dizzying degree. There really hasn't been anything that caters to working professional artists and image makers to simply send their work out their to their clients and fans. This past Monday we proudly launched PencilBooth 2.0 - Redesigned and rebuilt from the ground up as a visual newsletter service for creative types, and I am forcing everyone who reads this to please have a look at it as I really have spent more time and money than I should have on this, and am mildly freaking out. Answering the question of what an email newsletter app would look like that prioritised imagery over text, I'm ridiculously happy with what we came up with in response, especially given the limited size of our team. The new PencilBooth homepage aggregates images from everyone's recent issues, plus we have heaps of new features like link-in-bio support, and this new thing we came up with called 'The B-Roll', which is a simple way to share links in a more visual bite-size manner, plus lots of other bells and whistles. We also removed all the previous limitations on images and text and send frequency from the original app. So after all the hard hard work of building the thing, the hard hard hard work comes next, which is getting people to actually check it out and use it. It's still early days and there's lots more we want to do and fix up, but I can confidently say from being a user of this thing as well, this is something special and I hope you like it. ✨✏️📸

For folk who need to send emails this looks very nice. Super easy to use and pretty nice interface. 👍

I like the different approach! This would really help marketing agencies stand out!

Congratulations on the launch! 🎉 It's incredible to see how your initial idea has evolved into a fully realized platform, especially with the commitment to prioritizing imagery over text. The redesign and new features showcase your innovative approach and attention to detail. Great work!

I love this. I think its a refreshing twist for the newsletter bros! I sub to lots of them and they are only getting more and more visual over time. Soon, maybe this will be the standard! Congrats on the hard work!

Love this!! Sharing with my designer friend who has been thinking about starting a newsletter forever to share his work.

Wow..nice