Your publishing schedule

A schedule in Issue Mint is a statement of intent, not an automation. Choosing weekly and a Thursday tells your readers when to expect an issue, fills your sponsorship calendar with real dates and gives the composer a sensible default. The issue itself still goes out when you send it, or at the time you set on the issue.

Frequency and timezone live in Settings, then General, beside the name and web address.

The four frequencies

Issue Mint offers weekly, every two weeks, monthly and no fixed schedule.

Monthly is worth reading carefully: it means every 28 days rather than the same date each month, so a Thursday newsletter stays on a Thursday instead of drifting onto a Saturday. No fixed schedule is a real option rather than an unset one, and it is the honest choice for a newsletter that goes out when there is enough worth sending. Picking it leaves the schedule line off your website entirely and empties the sponsorship calendar, both of which are covered below.

The publishing day and the send time

The publishing day and the usual send time are chosen during setup, next to the frequency, and only when the frequency is not “no fixed schedule”.

Both are read in the newsletter’s own timezone rather than yours or your browser’s, which matters if you run a New York newsletter from London. The send time is a default and a description, never a trigger: nothing is sent because a clock reached it.

The general settings tab shows the frequency and the timezone but not the day or the time, so those two cannot be changed from the settings screens as things stand. Write to us if a publishing day needs moving and we will move it.

What the schedule tells your readers

The schedule becomes one line on your website, written from the frequency and the day together.

Weekly with a Thursday gives “Published every Thursday”. Every two weeks gives “Published every other Thursday”, and monthly gives “Published monthly, on a Thursday”. A frequency with no day chosen falls back to the frequency on its own, and no fixed schedule prints nothing at all rather than inventing a cadence. The line appears under your masthead on the website every newsletter gets and along the foot of your site’s social card.

Your sponsor page words it differently, because it is talking to a buyer: it says “Weekly, by email” and, without a fixed schedule, “It goes out when there is enough worth sending.”

What the composer does with it

The schedule field in the composer opens on tomorrow’s date at your send time, in the newsletter’s timezone.

Tomorrow rather than today, because by the time most people are writing, today’s send time has gone and the field refuses a time in the past. The publishing day is not used here: the composer offers tomorrow whatever day of the week that is, and you are free to move it. Sending now ignores the schedule completely, and scheduling an issue covers what happens between setting a time and the issue going out.

What the sponsorship calendar does with it

The frequency and the publishing day are what project your future issue dates, which is what a sponsor actually books.

Issue Mint projects 26 upcoming dates, starting at the first publishing day on or after tomorrow, and rolls the horizon forward once a week. Tomorrow is the earliest date on sale because today’s issue is already being written, and selling a slot in it would be selling something you cannot deliver. On a monthly schedule the run starts from tomorrow and steps 28 days at a time.

No fixed schedule means no projected dates, so the bookable calendar has nothing in it. Sell on the enquiry form instead: both modes show the same inventory, and selling sponsorship in your issues explains the difference between them.

Changing the schedule later

Change the frequency whenever you like. It takes effect immediately, and nothing that has already happened is rewritten.

The line on your website updates on the next page load, and the calendar regenerates from the new frequency on its next weekly refresh. Slots a sponsor has already booked keep the dates they were booked for, whether or not those dates are still on the projection, so a change of cadence never quietly cancels a sale. What it does do is change the dates on offer from then on, which is worth mentioning to anybody midway through a conversation about a slot.

Nothing goes out on a schedule

Issue Mint never writes, assembles or sends an issue on your behalf, on a schedule or otherwise.

There is no automation that turns your library into a Thursday issue, and no setting that says “send whatever is ready”. An issue leaves when you press send or at the time you put on that issue, and nothing else. The schedule on this page describes your intent to readers and to sponsors, and every send is still a decision somebody made.