Last week readers were exposed to a work-in-progress - a potentially new format for the emailed E-Sylum, a slimmed-down "thin" version with less content in the email itself and full articles available via a link to our website. While those links were not working Sunday night, they have been available since early Monday morning. I asked some readers for their thoughts and compiled some below.

The "thin" version was initially suggested by the American Numismatic Association for the ANA Edition we were sending weekly to their members. They and their consultants thought their members found the issues too large and unwieldy. The E-Sylum is certainly different than your typical numismatic email. No question, it's huge. We developed the thin version as an experiment. It has all the same articles in the same order, but most articles are shortened to a paragraph or two of text and one or two images, followed by a "Read more here" link. This is the format used by many blog emails.

While the thin issues are certainly smaller (about half the size of a full issue) they're still large because of the ad images and the sheer number of articles each week. We started producing these in parallel with the regular version and have been archiving them since July 19, 2020 on the NBS web site. You can take a look here:
https://www.coinbooks.org/thin/

We've received feedback both in favor of and against the thin version. Some reader comments are shown below. It seems one is either a reader or a skimmer with strong feelings on either side.

THOSE IN FAVOR OF THIN...

Kavan Ratnatunga writes:

Dave Hirt writes:

Duane Feisel writes:

... AND THOSE AGAINST

Rex Stark writes:

Daniel Demeo writes:

Greg Burns writes:

Ken Berger writes:

Paul Hybert writes:

Actually, the thin versions are already available on our website.If there is a large demand for it, we could set up a separate mailing list for those who prefer the thin email format. But meanwhile, we'll keep archiving the thin versions and they'll be available on our website at the same time as the issue published by email. BOTH versions will be available when the email goes out, and you can read the version of your choice with the links at the top of each issue (right after the list of article headlines). They look like this:

Thanks to all of you for your feedback. I think this is a fair solution. But there is an ulterior motive beyond the traditional email we've been sending every week since September 4, 1998. "Thin" articles with a summary and "Read more here" link are more suitable for posting to social media such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Now that we can reliably create these slimmed-down articles each week, we'll be able at least in theory to post them to NBS social media accounts. Ideally, we would do that automatically so we don't need a poor overworked volunteer to laboriously cut and paste the content into posts. This will increase our reach and find more potential readers where they are.

Email is far from dead - in fact it's as popular as ever and still a great way to build and serve an audience. But to better promote numismatics it can't hurt to have exposure on multiple channels at once. Your thoughts and suggestions will be appreciated.-Editor