We’re running a survey to help shape the new run of the magazine. It’s open until the end of January. If you didn’t know about it already, you’re probably getting our emails, so be sure to join the mailing list for a cheerful monthly newsletter.

At the end of the questionnaire, there’s a space for general comments. And you’ve all been so nice! There have been some questions and constructive suggestions in there, for which I remain grateful. Since the survey is anonymous, I can’t respond to anyone individually so I’ve collated my responses here. It’ll serve as a sneak peek into what the returning print mag will be like too.

I fucking love New Escapologist!

Thank you, mother.

I arrived too late to be part of the initial magazine party, one way to raise funds I think would be offer a digital (probably easier) or physical full back catalogue at a discount.

Nobody is too late! The original 13 issues were written to withstand the tests of time, precisely so new people could read them forever. Doubtless they’ve aged a bit in the five to fifteen years since they were published but not in the usual way of magazines. Think of it as patina. You can buy Issues 1-7 at discount here (or here for PDF editions) and Issues 8-13 here (here for PDF).

There needs to be more women/different/better gender balance for me. For example, your list of authors [in one of the survey questions] is nearly all men. I do enjoy your writing but a print magazine needs to reflect the readership. If it’s for men, that’s fine, but I wouldn’t be reading it so much.

Quite right. I don’t want the magazine to be yet another boys’ club. As well as being morally bleak, it would be aesthetically dull. In real life I’m quite sensitive to this sort of thing and I seek pluralism in my reading. This will be reflected in the mag.

The author list you mention was a sausage fest but the object of the question was to capture people’s preferences for writing style (e.g. Orwell being straight and clean, Le Guin being vibrant and radical, Sedaris being a living humorist, Ferriss being self-helpy). That the authors best suited to serve as reference points were almost exclusively male* is indeed a shitty thing, a consequence of decades of male privilege. I vow not to prop up that culture in the mag. I have two female columnists in mind and a particular non-white female author for the first issue’s interview. These aren’t diversity hires either, they’re people whose work I love. Perhaps even more importantly, editorial (the voice of the mag) will never assume the reader is male. That’s a promise.

(*Le Guin was the only woman on the list; she was almost the most popular option as well, just 1% of the vote share behind winner Orwell).

Here are three separate comments concerning a digital edition:

If you go with print copy, please also consider a PDF version. Shipping can be more expensive than the item depending on where in the world it is going.

So, the reason I would love a digital edition is for accessibility reasons. My vision is alright now, but when your magazine was originally coming out, I was blind and PDFs are generally inaccessible. Digital will also help with worldwide readership (eg. India, Nigeria, maybe even South Korea?!).

I am a fan of Substack. Have you considered this as an option?

I hereby promise a digital edition. Almost certainly PDF and probably also an epub. I will probably avoid Kindle altogether: I’m no fan of Amaz*n and there was clear (and commendable) pushback in the survey.

A paid tier Substack might be a good solution for a digital edition too, but I worry about the content being mediated by an admittedly very good and seemingly less-evil-than-usual social media company; I’ll look into it more sincerely.

I do love it when our stuff travels far into the world and I have always tried to be inclusive with cultural references for that reason. Shipping costs are of course a barrier so this is a strong argument for a digital edition. As a point of fact though, I have already “broken” South Korea with Escape Everything! in translation!

Mastodon

Probably not. Then again I’m always about five years late to these things.

I already retired at 50, so I’m interested in living the lifestyle vs preparing to escape

Enjooooy yourself, while you’re still in the pink. Congrats! The balance of escape tactics to good life material will be baked into the cake.

I would love to subscribe to a magazine even abroad (I’m in Germany) and would also bring it to our local meeting group of minimalists and escapologists of all sorts for discussions.

Thank you. I wonder now if there’s a way for me to encourage this sort of socialising? Then again, people will always self-organise.

If published twice per year, I would love the issues to come out at the brink of holiday seasons, e.g in late June and in mid-December. This kind of reading suits the holidays well.

That’s a nice thought and probably conducive to the magazine being read rather than merely purchased. For my own creative satisfaction, I’d like to get Issue One (or 14, I haven’t yet chosen a numbering scheme) out earlier than June. I was thinking April and October for a schedule. That’s a fairly arbitrary decision though and those months are admittedly quite busy in the world of work because of the shape of the financial year. I’ll give it some thought. Maybe 2023 can be April and December but then June/December in future years.

As far as content goes, I just love the magazine although I definitely agree with some of your recent blog posts that a more “timely” magazine would feel like a cool counterpoint to the timelessness of the original run. Let’s say 50:50 timely to timeless ratio? It’d be cool to have a mix of the blog-style content and the timeless guest essays in the magazine.

That’s a good idea and I’ll probably run with it. I don’t want to lose the in-depth essay style we had in the original run, but I do want more magazine-style items this time around like letters and columns. I won’t allow such frivolity to take over though, so 50/50 might be a healthy balance.

Include news and stories of escape, idling, FIRE etc. from outside the UK and North America (by preference from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and South America)!

I can confirm today that there will be a quite special idling column. Escape is an important theme and I’d like to be more firmly anchored to it than we were in the past: less mission creep. That Emily Dickinson quote is my touchstone. And FIRE really is essential, isn’t it? I have ideas about that. As to more internationalism, yes please. I’ll see what I can do.

I wonder if it would be good to send escapologists a few free copies to leave in libraries, doctors’ waiting rooms etc? I think it’s important to preach not only to the converted…

Yes and no. I do see the importance of spreading certain messages, such as those of minimalism or the “you don’t have to do what you’re told” revelation. On the other hand, I’ve been quite careful to develop a receptive audience so that I don’t have to expose myself to the draining and unproductive attitude of trolls. It’s amazing how violently some people can react to, for example, the light suggestion that they curb their consumer privileges. Intelligent and gentle people use libraries though, so maybe that would be safe.

Page 3 featuring Wringham

Is that you, dear? If not: excellent.

Will you be using TeX / ConTeXt for the typesetting? I’d like to read / publish an article by you about your use of ConTeXt for our Dutch NTG journal.

I know you! Alas, we will not be using TeX this time around. I’ll be cheaply imitating the style of the old magazine to an extent though. This is partly due to my own temporal and technical limitations: I enjoyed using TeX in the original run but it was done in close collaboration with a particular friend who is not on board anymore (we’re still great friends, he just doesn’t want to typeset the mag this time).

Thrilled that NE is coming back. Regarding YouTube and podcast etc, be wary of spreading yourself too thinly. You have limited resources and should not feel the need to obey the whims of the baying crowd to go multi-channel. The old magazine was a perfect distillation of intelligence and irreverence. If you can capture that again, with a contemporary edge, you’ll have done your readers a great service. Good luck!

You’re right, of course. For now I do not think we’ll be branching out into YouTube or podcasts. I did receive an offer of editing assistance from a wonderful reader who also happens to be a professional video editor though, so at least one barrier has been lifted were I to do something for YouTube. This said, YouTube was the least popular format discussed in the survey: it wasn’t unpopular but the readership prefers blogs and podcasts. If we ever venture into audio or video formats, it’ll be in our second year. The limited resources you mention will be focused on delivering two issues of the print mag in 2023.

Can we send you articles for consideration?

Maybe send ideas before articles. I don’t want people to write 2,000 words that I have to spike. Prompted by your question, I have updated the contributor guidelines.

Call your mother.

Leave me alone, mummy. I’m playing with my friends.

Just found out after years you still exist even though I’ve been on the email list

Yes, that was a Mailchimp problem. Readers reported that the newsletter was going to their spam. Thanks to the recent move to Substack, more people seem to be receiving, reading and clicking. Phew. Welcome back.

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Thanks everyone. If you didn’t complete the survey, you still can. If you just want to make one comment or suggestion instead, you can do it (less anonymously) by email or beneath this post.

If you’d like to support the work of bringing the magazine back to life, please buy The Good Life for Wage Slaves (for which I now get 100% of the money) and, of course, send caffeine.

06 Jan 2023 No Comments