A New Direction for the McAnally’s Mailing List

If you’re on the McAnally’s mailing list, you’ll want to read this!
McAnally’s is an unbridled success. We started this list damn near ten years ago (just think about that!), back when Jim didn’t have phrases like ‘Best-Selling Author’ and ‘Soon to Be A Television Series’ attached to his name and his works. We had one true mission. Get Jim famous. I’d say, mission accomplished.
This list spawned the Bookstore Commandos, who clandestinely ensured that Jim’s books were outward-facing and prominent in many a bookstore. They chatted up (or were, themselves!) librarians and bookstore employees and generally proselytized, getting the grass-roots, word-of-mouth momentum for Jim rolling.
It’s with no small amount of pride (or, yeah, I’ll admit it, ego) that I’ll say that we have been a big part of getting Jim to where he is today. Though, yeah, maybe Jim’s talent had something to do with that (and Mister Marsters’ vocal talents certainly didn’t hurt). 😉
But success is coming at a price. McAnallys is straining under its weight, in the social sense. It wants to be a relevant, on-topic discussion list about Jim’s writing and the craft of writing itself; it wants to be a wide-open, happy chatty pub atmosphere where any discussion topic goes; it wants to be a place where Jim can talk directly with the people about the stuff that makes him tick; it wants to be a place where people can discuss spoiler material about lots of stuff; it wants to be a place where people are protected from spoilers.
These goals can’t be satisfied with a single mailing list. And, in thinking about this — I’ve been chewing on it for several months now — I’ve realized that it can’t really, easily be satisfied with mailing lists, period. I think that mailing lists are good for getting the word out, but they’re not as robust a solution as they used to be, now that some really solid web forum solutions are out there.
Accordingly, I’ve made the decision to turn McAnallys into a web forum. This web forum will have a number of boards, split out into “spoilers okay!” and “spoilers NOT okay!” areas as needed, along with preserving an “anything goes!” area for people to have the conversations they used to have, here, on McAnallys. In fact, those conversations will have the restrictions we’ve had to put in place taken off, since most of the things we were trying to protect and preserve with those restrictions are going to be protected and preserved outside of the McAnally’s board itself.
I realize some people are pretty invested in the idea of a mailing list, but the simple fact is that we’re not really going to be able to support our own weight as Jim gets more and more successful — and, let’s be honest folks, we know he will. After all, we helped make it happen.
So here’s the plan:

  • This mailing list will continue to operate exactly as it does now for the next week or so.
  • At the end of that week, the mailing list will stop accepting new posts, but it will still be around so people can access the archives (eventually I’ll figure out if I can get those archives moved somewhere else).
  • Effective immediately, the new web forum is open for business. I’ll be making sure jim-butcher.com links in the web forum (though I haven’t gotten that done just yet) and expunges mention of the mcanally’s mailing list.
  • The JBANNOUNCE mailing list will continue to exist! We do still think that mailing lists are good for getting the word out; it’s just the function of back and forth discussion that we need to take to another solution.

Here’s what you need to do:

  • Go to https://www.jim-butcher.com/bb/
  • Click on the ‘register’ link, and create yourself an account.
  • You’ll be sent an email at the address you provide to confirm that you’ve provided a valid address
  • The email will contain a link that you need to click in order to activate your account
  • Once you have your account, you’ll be able to log in and see and access and post in all of the various forums we’ve set up for discussion.
  • If there’s a topic you’ve particularly enjoyed talking about here, on McAnally’s, take it with you! It should be pretty easy to figure out which board it should go on. Make sure to read the policies posted at the top of each board, and have at!

If you have any questions, please send them on over. And thank you for being a part of Jim’s continued success!
Best,
Fred