(2026-04-19) Sloan Shopkeeper Rampant

Robin Sloan: Shopkeeper Rampant. Today, I’m launching a new line of business: Penumbra Print Shop, a manufacturer of stationery with interesting capabilities.

Because last year I read The Notebook by Roland Allen, and it blew my mind!

Why with interesting capabilities? Because it’s me. Because there’s already so much stationery out there—clever and beautiful—and because I believe I can see a path towards a physical-digital synthesis that is provocative and useful.

This newsletter has a few parts, all connected:

• Magic Postcard: our first offering*
• Uh-oh, books changed my life again: how I became radicalized*
• Taking the note: synthesis and good luck*

Our first offering is Magic Postcard, which allows you, the sender, to attach a little piece of media—photo or video—that your recipient can view immediately upon delivery.

Scan the code, the video plays. There’s no app, no login, no subscription … this is really just a postcard! You buy it, you use it: just like a postcard.

Of course, it’s trivial to transmit a photo or video to the phone of someone you love … but, turns out, it is VERY FUN to send it to their mailbox instead

These postcards are designed and printed by me, right here in my office. I also wrote the software that makes them work, and I should add a word about that:

Magic Postcard is end-to-end encrypted, which means the media you attach is accessible ONLY by the bearer of the postcard. Penumbra Print Shop can’t see it, and, poetically, if the postcard is destroyed or discarded, the media is effectively deleted

Magic Postcard is available now, a pack of three inaugural designs

I’ve had longtime subscribers remark that they often “feel things coming in advance”: recommendations and reflections in this space grow into new projects, whole novels. Of course, this is never planned; it just so happens that thought becomes action. But, I like the idea that a Sloan-centric prediction market could totally foresee my next moves, simply by reading closely …

Last year, I recommended these three books, all related:

• The Book-Makers, by Adam Smyth*
• The Book, by Keith Houston*
• The Notebook, by Roland Allen*

Their cumulative effect on me was inspiring and refocusing. If I hadn’t read them, I would not now be pursuing this new line of business

Listen, I acknowledge it’s no surprise that the author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is energized by print … yet the magnitude of that energy is new. Maybe it’s overdue. Certainly, I have become a better printer than I ever was before. There’s the difference: the past year has been not theory but practice

That reading list was not just inspiring, but radicalizing. What do I mean by that? I mean that reflecting on the profound offerings of the book in all its forms, including the blank notebook, helped me understand more clearly the disappointment of the digital. (e-book)

I see remedies for the mess we’re in, civilizationally, if we can find ways to port the healthy, humane properties of print into digital space.

I believe the notebook provides a basically comprehensive model for information technology:

• Easy to manufacture anywhere on Earth
• Available in many configurations, from cheap to luxe
• Never runs out of power
• Never surprises you with an OS update
• Totally flexible interface: becomes whatever you imagine
• Totally private … yet never locks you out for lack of a password
• Can be shared when needed: as easy as tearing out a page
• Durable and reliable
• Data is sensibly partitioned: loss of a notebook is annoying, not life-ruining
• Compostable

There’s a whole R&D agenda here. For each property above, we can ask, how might the digital work more like this? Maybe it can’t ever reach the ideal of the paper notebook, but surely we can push that asymptote.

The last thing I’ll share is more personal. It’s about discovery and synthesis and good luck.

Over at Fat Gold, we’ve now operated our own olive mill for three seasons

The surprise was that I liked it; or, really, that my body liked it. Responded well. My legs felt good, and my stomach felt good, and my brain felt good, and at the end of each day I collapsed and slept soundly

After that first season, I resolved to “take the note” and find more of this embodied work in other seasons. Printing seemed, at first, too obvious … turns out, it was exactly the right amount of obvious

the question arose, could I print things that support your plans and desires, not just mine?

It doesn’t all have to be Robin’s dreams beamed into your brain.

Although: there are more of those coming, too.