A Long, Strange Trip for the ‘Uber for Nurses’Read more

Matt Kirkland, creator of the Dracula Daily newsletter. Photo via Matt Kirkland. Art by Shane Burke.

The Substacker Whose Dracula Serial Spawned a Newsletter Craze

Photo: Matt Kirkland, creator of the Dracula Daily newsletter. Photo via Matt Kirkland. Art by Shane Burke.

Everyone has a hefty classic sitting on their bookshelf collecting dust that they swear they’ll eventually get to but never do. Matt Kirkland has made a side project of helping some of those intimidated readers: Over 262,000 have signed up to read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula" serialized in his free Substack newsletter, Dracula Daily.

Kirkland, 42, works as a full-time web designer in Lawrence, Kan. After he re-read a copy of “Dracula” during the pandemic, he came up with the idea of republishing the epistolary novel split into 110 parts as a newsletter. Kirkland schedules Dracula Daily to send one section each day on dates that correspond to the novel’s letters, journal entries and newsletter articles, prefaced by a joke he writes. He started the May 16 newsletter, which contains an entry from one of the main character’s journals, with “Hold on a minute, you're telling me Dracula has roommates?”

Access on the go
View stories on our mobile app and tune into our weekly podcast.
Join live video Q&A’s
Deep-dive into topics like startups and autonomous vehicles with our top reporters and other executives.
Enjoy a clutter-free experience
Read without any banner ads.
CareRev co-founder Will Patterson stepped down as CEO last week. Art by Clark Miller
Exclusive startups venture capital
A Long, Strange Trip for the ‘Uber for Nurses’
Will Patterson was on a hot streak. As the co-founder and CEO of CareRev—a gig-work platform sometimes described as an “Uber for nurses”—he saw his company’s business surge during the pandemic as hospitals and clinics scrambled to find healthcare workers.
Instacart CEO Fidji Simo. Photo by Getty.
Exclusive startups Finance
Growth Wanes at Instacart, Gopuff
Grocery upstarts Instacart and Gopuff haven’t been able to deliver two things at once this year: growth and profits.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Photo by Bloomberg
semiconductors ai
Why Nvidia Aids Cloud Rivals of AWS, Google and Microsoft
Nvidia’s business of selling chips for artificial intelligence is going gangbusters, but the company faces a looming problem.
PRO
Introducing The Information’s Generative AI Database
OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched six months ago, igniting a boom in generative artificial intelligence.
The Port of Los Angeles, where Next Trucking has a significant presence. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.
Exclusive startups Finance
Logistics Startup Next Trucking Tries to Sell Itself
Sequoia Capital–backed logistics startup Next Trucking, facing a slowdown in the trucking sector, is trying to sell itself, according to people familiar with the matter and a pitch deck reviewed by The Information.
Adam D'Angelo photograph by Ko Sasaki. Art by Clark Miller
The 1:1 ai
Adam D’Angelo’s Endless Quest to Answer Everything
Adam D’Angelo is basking in an “ endless summer ” of artificial intelligence. A few weeks before he and 350 industry peers released a bizarre, one-line statement warning that AI could herald a nuclear-level extinction event, the 38-year-old co-founder of Quora told me he actually sees more upside in AI than downside.