A Just History Posts Check-In

Happy summer everybody! (Or, happy winter to my southern hemisphere friends). Just History Posts is approaching its 7^th birthday in just a couple of months, and having taken the last few weeks off from posting daily on social media, and with lots of other things going on in my life at the moment, I thought now was a good time to pause, take stock of everything, and make some changes around here. So here is a little check-in post for you all to let you know what’s going on!

Firstly, I recently started a newsletter which I would (of course) encourage you to sign up to. It was largely spurred by the endless changes to Twitter that keep driving people away and making it harder for me to connect with people on my author account there, but it was also a way to stay more in touch with those of you who follow me on Facebook or just here on the blog. I love talking to you all and hearing your thoughts and you are all a wonderfully supportive bunch.

I am trying to write my newsletters about twice a month, so you don’t need to worry about your inboxes getting filled up with it. If you’re interested in hearing more about me and my work as an author and historian, as well as extra pieces of historical information I come across in the news, then you should definitely check it out! You can read all my past newsletters on the website too for a taste of what they’re like. I’m hoping to keep them nice and interactive so you can have a say on what happens here (for example, my readers have already voted for what our next blog post will be!).

Through my newsletter, I also announced the exciting news that I have signed on to write two more books. One is my third book with The History Press, and one I have been planning for a long time, about Richard II. However, I didn’t want this to be a straight biography of just Richard. As you all probably know, I have a passion for women’s history, and research into a different topic during lockdown revealed a glimpse of the importance of women during Richard’s reign. And not just his mother and wife, but many other women too who played key roles at his court. There are also, of course, the fascinating presences of John of Gaunt and his son, the future Henry IV, to contend with, alongside Richard’s various favourites. This intoxicating mix of people, politics, and culture captured my imagination. In many ways it will be a very different book to what I have written before, and it will be a challenge, but I hope you will all be pleased with the outcome.

The second book I have signed on to write is with American publishers Abbeville Press. A very different kettle of fish altogether, this book comes back to my area of expertise and will be a history of women in the Middle Ages. But, great fun, this is going to be an illustrated book. Shorter than anything I have written before, it is going to be a broad oversight of many women from all strands of society across various European countries (how am I going to fit everything in?) and is going to be positively littered with beautiful pictures from medieval manuscripts, art, and beyond. I’m really excited to write this book and feel like I can have a lot of fun with it.

This, though, is where some of the changes to Just History Posts come in. I am still working full time in the heritage industry, and now I am commuting in to London and so have even less time in the evenings than I did before. This on top of writing two books, running a newsletter, writing posts for this blog and posting daily on social media is just not feasible any more. I don’t want to give any of these things up (I’m greedy like that) but something has to give. I’ve decided therefore to edit my social media schedule, and start posting every other day instead.

Social media algorithms have changed so much in the past few years, and whilst I am still constantly gaining followers, my reach is not really going up (and most of the algorithm changes make my reach go down, as they want people to pay for reach instead). Each of my social media posts take about 20 minutes to research and write, which doesn’t sound too much, but adds up to several hours across each week that I could be spending writing my books or doing more detailed blog posts on here. I can also tell from the patterns of people liking posts on Facebook that many people don’t actually see my posts until several days later. Hopefully that means that you won’t be affected too much by the reduction in my posts – in fact, you may even end up seeing even more of them.

Since drafting this blog post, Twitter made the announcement that they were going to put Tweetdeck (their scheduling software, for those not aware) behind the blue tick paywall. I have therefore made the decision to close Just History Posts’ Twitter account. Scheduling is vital to me keeping the social media pages going, as I cannot log on every day to write something. It therefore is just not feasible to keep the page going, especially as engagement on Twitter has plummeted so much and so many people have left now. But, as I mentioned earlier, you can still find me in plenty of other places! I may also consider making a Threads/Instagram page for the blog, but I’ll wait to see how Threads develops as a platform before making more work for myself!

I’m really keen to keep Just History Posts going. It opened up so many doors for me, and I love being able to explore different parts of history and sharing them with you all. Every time someone writes that they’ve learnt something new or enjoyed reading my posts it brings me so much joy, and I hope that these small changes will mean I’ll be able to bring you even more of that – I often sacrificed writing proper blog posts because I needed to keep up with social media. Hopefully we can also do something fun in October for our 7^th birthday!

Thank you all for reading, and for having read so many of my words over the year. You are the reason I keep pushing myself to do all these different things (and the dozen other projects I have in my back pocket for “when I have time”). If you want to support me further, then you can buy my books, Royal Witches or The Queen and the Mistress, follow me on Facebook, sign up to my newsletter, check out my shop or buy me a hot chocolate! But most of all, please keep on reading.

Previous Blog Post: Medieval Mythbusting: Did People Believe the World was Flat?

You may like: Isabella of Woodstock, The Medieval Princess Who Controlled Her Own Fate

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