Publicist first arrived in the app store on April 14, 2019. Now, a little more than two years later, I'm removing it.

Publicist started as a free app with a subscription model to support it. The idea was that this would allow for users to have a free trial to see if the app worked for their workflow before they were expected to pay any money. This seemed like a nicer plan than expecting users to pay up front. However, even with a steady stream of downloads since version 1.0, in the end only about 10 people even activated the free trial.

This year I released a new version which changed this free trial to a single purchase. I know many people are allergic to subscriptions, especially for software, so I thought a single one-time purchase to use the app might be more widely accepted. I was wrong and months later exactly 0 people have paid to unlock the app. Downloads continue at a steady pace, but not a single person thought the app was worth a one time purchase to use.

For these reasons, Publicist is going away. If you happen to be one of the few people who thought the app was worth paying for and still wish to use it, I have made the code open-source on github and if you write to me, I can help you set it up (or maybe just make you a special build).

I originally wrote Publicist because this blog was running on Ghost, but their business model and priorities have since moved far away from my own. They seem to be doing well, so I'm happy for them, but it gives even more reason for Publicist to be removed: individuals with blogs are not using Ghost. Now this blog is running on zola, a static site generator. This means there's no API to interact with and nothing Publicist can do. Rather than drop my markdown files into the app, I just put them in the proper folder and Zola handles the rest. If you're one of the few people still trying to use Ghost (or even wordpress really) for their blog as an individual, you might like this option better as well.

My thanks to those of you who have paid for software I've published and I hope to have new and interesting offerings for you in the future!