Filtering by Tag: NEWSLETTERS
Porn Blind Graphic
For “Porn Blind,” my in-progress, ten-part, 10,000-word series about what I learned about the adult movie industry and myself over the last 30 years, I created this title graphic that I use at the top of every installment of the series. The background is a photo I took on an adult movie set, and I added the text using Canva.
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Read It and Weep
“What I had discovered was not a window into the adult movie industry but a peephole into what people will do when they are allowed to do anything at all.” The latest installment of “Porn Blind” is out. Subscribe here.
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Porn Blind, Serialized
Adult movie set with flowers, Canoga Park, Calif., 2009 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
In my Substack newsletter, I’m serializing “Porn Blind,” a 10-part, approximately 10,000-word series about what I learned writing about the adult movie industry for nearly 30 years, how the business changed, and how it changed me. Subscribe here. Read all the parts so far here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5.
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The Porn Blind Project #1
Dildos on table, North Hollywood, Calif., 2000 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“Porn Blind” is a a 10-part series about what I learned writing about the adult movie industry for nearly 30 years, how the business changed, and how it changed me. (You can subscribe here.) I’m publishing the series on my Substack newsletter, and I thought I would chronicle the project, analytics, and insights here.
Subject
As I state in the series subheader, I spent almost 30 years writing about the adult movie industry. Along the way, I learned a lot about the business of making pornography—and about myself. This series seeks to reveal what it’s like to write about the adult industry, how being a woman shaped that experience, and how the sausage gets made when you’re writing about one of the most provocative industries in the world.
Backstory
In fact, I’ve been trying to write this story for years. For some reason, I found myself unable to do it. Last December, I started another attempt. Because I was out of town, I began writing it in Notes on my iPhone. The advantage to this was that it was hard to revise while I was working on it, which was good, because I can get caught up in over revising. The disadvantage was that writing that way made my neck hurt. So, when I got back from traveling, I transferred what I had written into a Word document. Then I spent the next several months doing what I always do when I try and write this story: restarting it, revising it, not finishing it. Finally, on a Sunday night about a week and a half ago, I became extremely frustrated. The problem was that this process in which I was engaged never works for me, or only with great difficulty. What I do like to do is write online. So, I decided, I would write it in installments (using some of what I had written already) and publish it through my newsletter. In the early morning hours of the following Monday, I published part one. This push-to-publish process does not allow for me to stall out. At some point you have to publish.
goal
I’m not sure what the goal here is. To write something I’ve been wanting to write for a long time. To conduct an experiment that will reveal what happens when you serialize long-form journalism through a newsletter. To get a book deal. To increase my visibility. To prove that I have something to say about this subject matter.
PUBLISHING
While I originally fantasized I would publish the entire series in 10 days, that proved unrealistic. So I settled on a schedule of publishing once a week (the target day is every Monday). The final total length is expected to be approximately 10,000 words. It is comprised of 10 sections, so each section is around 1,000 words. Each installment of the newsletter for this series is one section. As far as promoting the project, after I publish each installment, I share a link to the latest installment on social media and my blog.
analytics
Subscribers: On March 15, 2026, the day before I published the first installment of this series, I had 934 subscribers. A week later, on March 22, 2026, I had 947 subscribers. That was an increase of around 1.4%.
Views: To date, the first installment of the series has 1,056 views, and the second installment of the series, which published yesterday, has 820 views, for a series total of 1,876 views.
Open rate: To date, the open rate for the first installment is 42.1%. I’ll share the open rate for the second installment next week, when I update this data.
INSIGHTS
What are we to conclude from the undertaking of this project thus far? Really, there isn’t enough data to conclude much on the data front, other than there has been a small uptick in subscribers. So far, I’m enjoying the process of doing the series, that it gives me soup-to-nuts control over the project.
I’ll be back next week with more thoughts, data, and insights to share in The Porn Blind Project #2.
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Porn Blind: Part 2
Adult actress, Las Vegas, Nev., 2013 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
In my newsletter, I’m publishing “Porn Blind,” a 10-part series about what I learned writing about the adult movie industry for nearly 30 years, how the business changed, and how it changed me. The series starts here. Subscribe to my newsletter here. If you want to support my work, please share a link to it online. Thanks!
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How Crisis Communications Consulting Is Like Wrestling With an Octopus
“When someone asks me what the most challenging work I do as a corporate fixer is, the answer is always crisis communications.” Read The Fixer Code: “Stop Making These 3 Crisis Communications Mistakes.”
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Me and My Oeuvre
“Recently, I’ve been updating my website, and as part of the process I went through some of my past journalism stories. Quite a few are about the adult movie industry.” — read the rest and subscribe
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The Ghostwriter
William Hope ghost photo, via BuzzFeed
“Ghostwriting for high-net-worth individuals is not about words. It’s about power, risk, identity, and control—usually at moments when those things feel newly unstable.” — from my newsletter, The Fixer Code
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These Interstitial Spaces
“Later it occurred to me that I’m only really happy when I’m in these interstitial spaces, where I’ve kind of slipped behind the curtain to see what people are really about, and it’s like living in the place that everyone wants to visit but is too afraid to talk about.” — from my newsletter, “I’m Only Happy When It Rains”
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Operation Me
AVN Awards, Las Vegas, Nev., 2013 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“Because the narrative is filtered through me, covers a vast expanse of time, and includes not only what I witnessed but how what I witnessed shaped the person I became, the essay had to feature me as a central character. In the past, I’ve avoided this angle; on the set of an adult movie, I am the least interesting thing in the room.” Read my latest newsletter, “How to Perform a Literary Auto-vivisection,” and subscribe.
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The 1,000,000 Views Photo
“I’ve posted photos I’ve taken on adult movie sets before, but this one seemed to appeal to people for reasons that were not entirely clear to me.” Read and subscribe to my newsletter: The Reverse Cowgirl.
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Tripp and Other Tales
Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“In maybe 2016, I got this idea to write a short story about a male actor in the adult movie business.” Read it.
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Why Every (Successful) CEO Should Write a Book
“The problem wasn’t his story. It was him.” An excerpt from The Fixer Code on why you should write a book.
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The Fixer Code
Logo by Chris Bishop
Subscribe to my new newsletter about my strategic communications consultancy, The Fixer: The Fixer Code.
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WWYD?
Estate sale, Toluca Lake, Calif., 2023 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“What would you do if you discovered an adult movie was being filmed in the house behind yours?” Read it.
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I Mean ...
Come See Allycin, Hollywood, Calif., 2000 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
"I mean, if you want to see porn, go watch a porn movie." Read my newsletter and subscribe to get it weekly.
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Post-Traumatic Porn Disorder
“It’s possible, I suppose, I was the first woman to set out to acquire Post-Traumatic Porn Disorder.” Read here.
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The Young Voyeur
“Revisiting that scene made me wonder if that was a kind of cinematic experience of the erotic.” Read it here.
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Were You Brave?
The Glendale Room, Glendale, Calif., 2005 | Photo credit: Susannah Breslin
“Generally, my question for myself in life is pretty simple: Were you brave?” Subscribe to my newsletter here.
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