Kosmo Foto’s newsletter ‘Advance/Rewind’ has just relaunched this week.
After several years on Mailchimp, we moved the newsletter to its new home on Beehiiv.
In my day job, I work with an excellent newsletter team and they recommended Beehiiv when I said I was thinking of moving the newsletter. I had also considered Substack, but have been concerned over how easy it is to find extremist content on the platform. (A few people dropped me a line to say they too had issues with the platform – thanks for your feedback!)
We kicked the newsletter off with a first post this week giving a bit of a preview of what will be happening on the newsletter in 2026, and though readers of the blog might find it interesting too.
The newsletter will be free to read, and in 2026, it will start to feature a few adverts for free-to-read posts. I’ll also be offering a paid-subscriber tier where people can support Kosmo Foto for $5 a month, giving access to some exclusive posts that won’t be available anywhere else.
The paid tier will include the likes of:
More exclusive content: I’ll be publishing more stories exclusively on the newsletter. These will include opinion pieces based on news and new product releases.
I’m also looking into publishing “roll reports” with short articles featuring results from cameras I’ve shot – now that I’m selling cameras regularly through Cameraburo I am shooting a lot more film, as my bank balance will show… and we’re all here for the cameras and the photographs, right?
Early access to upcoming stories: The newsletter will feature an early look at forthcoming stories on the blog, such as camera reviews.
I’ll also start publishing my Single Frame posts on the newsletter before they are published on the blog.
There will be plenty on offer if you can’t afford the paid tier, though.
Community outreach: I’m interested in featuring more about the analogue photography community, whether it be in London where I live or further afield. I’m planning some features and interviews for the newsletter. If you have events like photowalks, drop me an email!
Cameraburo previews: I’ll be letting newsletter subscribers know about cameras and lenses coming onto the Cameraburo shelves before they hit the website. Been waiting for a fully working FED-4? A Ricoh compact for under £60? A toy camera that will be the envy of your photowalk gang? Subscribe!
Why am I doing this? The changing landscape for blogs makes publishing in the 2020s very different to when Kosmo Foto started in 2011. AI large language models scrape content without recompense or recognition. Social channels strangle organic reach. It’s hard to reach a loyal audience these days – except via a newsletter.
With ad revenue for blogs falling amid all these changes, we’ll be able to make sure we can pay Kosmo Foto’s not-insubstantial costs and make sure the blog is free to read for everyone through 2026 and beyond.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
