Buy my book: The Best Internet Essays 2025

Michael Dean’s final call to order The Best Internet Essays 2025, a limited-edition pocket-sized paperback shipping April 6th. Priced at $29 with 100% of royalties distributed to writers, judges, and the 2026 prize pool. The post consolidates the full project arc into a linked timeline of eight prior essays, from announcing the $10k prize through the winner profile.

Dean reflects on the self-publishing process — shifting between software development, operations, editing, and graphic design while becoming a first-time parent. The seven-month arc from prize announcement to printed book is presented as an all-consuming but worthwhile ordeal. He describes receiving the final test print and planning to read the anthology cover-to-cover for the first time in a park the next morning.

The post is structurally a launch/sales email but also serves as a retrospective index, linking every piece in the Essay Architecture Prize series chronologically. This makes it a useful reference for how Dean sequences a long content arc: competition announcement, criteria textbook, open prompt, feedback tooling, judging process, winner announcement, thematic analysis, winner profile, and final book launch.

RDCO mapping: The content sequencing pattern — building a project in public across eight newsletter issues, each adding a layer while linking back to the full arc — is a strong template for Sanity Check series planning. The royalty model (100% to contributors) and Metalabel distribution are worth noting as alternative creator-economy structures. The self-publishing operational candor (exhausting but worth it) is the kind of tangible detail that makes newsletter writing feel grounded rather than performative.