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How Air Mail convinces luxury brands to sponsor its newsletter

To simply refer to Air Mail as a newsletter is to misrepresent what it actually is: a magazine that just happens to be delivered through the inbox. It has the feel and aesthetic of a print glossy, which shouldn’t be surprising given that it was co-founded by Graydon Carter, the longtime Vanity Fair editor who helmed the magazine through its most influential era. And while Air Mail leaned into paid subscriptions from the very beginning, its founders also knew that luxury brands would want to reach its global, affluent audience.

To court these brands, Air Mail hired Emily Davis, a 23-year veteran of Conde Nast. In a recent interview, Davis walked me through how she explains Air Mail’s value to brands, the company’s ecommerce strategy, and its decision to launch its own brick and mortar storefront.

You can watch the interview in the video embedded below.

Want to be featured in an interview like this? Shoot me an email and tell me about your own media outlet.

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theSkimm finally found a buyer

The media holding company Ziff Davis announced it’s buying theSkimm, the female-focused media company that started out as a daily newsletter:

TheSkimm will sit under Everyday Health Group's consumer portfolio … It will operate as a standalone brand within the portfolio and will retain its branding and staff. TheSkimm co-CEOs Danielle Weisberg and Carly Zakin, who co-founded the brand in 2012, will stay on and continue to lead the brand under its new owners. The outlet currently has more than 75 full-time employees. There are no plans to reduce staff as part of the deal.

A few years ago I wrote a piece about how theSkimm made a huge mistake by taking on so much VC cash, which then led to the company launching all sorts of content verticals that didn't generate much revenue or audience attention. That investment also raised its valuation significantly, making it much harder to find a buyer once the VC media bubble popped. Its purchase price hasn't been announced, but my guess is that Ziff Davis paid well below the amount it was valued at by its VC investors.

The slush pile vs self publishing

This is a fascinating look at the "slush pile" — the term used for the unsolicited manuscripts sent into publishers and literary agents. Typically, the slush pile has been regarded as a no-man's land, treated with disdain by everyone who actually works in publishing. This piece pretty much confirms that:

In a 2012 article for Poets & Writer’s, Scott Hoffman of Folio Literary management estimated that Folio agents received, collectively, about 100,000 unsolicited queries a year. (Around 11,000 per agent.) In a 2014 article for the same publication, Susan Golomb (now of Writer’s House) estimated that she received about 20-30 new submissions daily; on the high end, that adds up to a little less than 11,000, not too far off from Hoffman’s estimate. (“And that was in 2012!” said Regina Brooks, president of the AAR and owner of Serendipity Literary Management, when I shared those numbers during the webinar.)

So let’s assume each of the 1,500 agents in the United States receives a similar volume. That’s 16,500,000 manuscripts in the collective slush pile each year.

To me, the problem of the slush pile basically boils down to sheer volume: there are certainly good books buried in them, but agents just don't think it's worth investing the time and resources into digging through all the bad stuff just so they can unearth these gems.

This is why so many authors just get fed up and go the self-publishing route; why go through the years of finding an agent and then shopping a manuscript around to a publisher when you can just bet on yourself and bring the book directly to market? If the book takes off, then you at least have some solid sales figures you can use to bypass the slush pile for your next book.

The nonexistent synergies between Hollywood and video game studios

Just about every Hollywood studio that's attempted to develop its own games has eventually given up on the effort, choosing instead to license its IP to outside game studios. It just seems like making film/TV is a fundamentally different skillset than developing games:

Despite the breakout success of “The Last of Us” and Amazon’s “Fallout” series, many traditional players appear wary of continuing to develop new TV hits based on games. There is nothing of the sort across WBD despite top-shelf gaming IP leading HBO’s current programming slate, nor is Peacock developing anything based on games after adding “Twisted Metal” to its originals.

Paramount does have a TV program based on a game in development after canceling “Halo” on Paramount+, but “Golden Axe” is intended to simply be an animated show on Comedy Central.

ICYMI: How The Art of Manliness built its loyal audience

Behind the paywall

Here’s what I have on deck for paid subscribers:

1. How Google helped the New York Times achieve its cooking recipes dominance

2. Why Spotify is soliciting novellas

3. Why news publishers shouldn’t launch their own TV streaming apps

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How Google helped the New York Times achieve its cooking recipes dominance...