July 26, 2024
Today officially marks our website's one-year anniversary, and it's been a very good year indeed. As of this writing, Letters To You has published a total of 176 articles, and we have had more than 26,000 unique visitors. More than 16,000 were from North America and more than 7,000 were from Europe, but we also have had significant numbers of visitors from other regions of the world, including our visitors from Aotearoa New Zealand, Argentina, Australia, Bermuda, Brazil, the Cayman Islands, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, Peru, the Republic of the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Türkiye, the United Arab Emirates, and Viet Nam.
Of course we are thrilled and honored by this overwhelming response from Springsteen fans around the globe, and we thank each and every one of our loyal readers and visitors who made this first year such a successful one for Letters To You. We also hope that many, if not all, of our visitors will continue checking in with us on a regular basis, as we continue working to deliver to our fellow fans some of the best reporting and reflections on the work of Bruce Springsteen and his various collaborators...past, present, and future.
As always, to help us accomplish our goals consistently, we appreciate whatever financial support our readers can give to us. We remain committed to providing access to all Letters To You content to everyone online, with no paywalls or tiered-access provisions in place. It does cost us some money, however, for us to make that happen regularly, especially since we also believe in paying our contributors (writers, photographers, etc.) as fairly as we can for their work. Therefore we rely greatly on any "tips" that readers can send us, as well as any appropriate advertising revenue that we can generate. So if you feel inspired to give us a one-year "birthday gift" at this time, please click here to "tip" us, and thank you very much for your support.
We even have a small but appropriate special incentive for almost everyone who "tips" us between now and the end of this month, with thanks again to our friends at Rolling Stone Germany...
As we reported three months ago, their May 2024 issue celebrating Born in the U.S.A.'s fortieth anniversary came packaged with a world-exclusive 7" vinyl picture-sleeve reissue of the album's first single, which also was Bruce Springsteen's all-time-best-selling single: "Dancing In The Dark" b/w the album-outtake "Pink Cadillac." This 2024 vinyl reissue is available only with the May 2024 issue of Rolling Stone Germany. You can click here to order a copy.
Or... you could win one from us! Since Rolling Stone Germany has once again been kind enough to provide us with a total of four additional copies of this special issue, we're going to again raffle off randomly a copy to each of four new, separate, and lucky winners, as we did last April. (Once you've won one of the copies, or if you already won one from us last April, you're automatically out of the running to win one of these four remaining copies.) And we've again made it super-easy to enter this special raffle. You automatically will be entered one time for each dollar you place in our "tip jar" between now and 11:59 p.m. ET on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Donate $10 and get 10 chances to win, donate $25 and get 25 chances to win, etc. Again, please click here to "tip" us, and thanks again for all of your support.
After the raffle-entry period closes next Wednesday, four lucky winners will be randomly selected from the pool of all eligible raffle entrants. Each lucky winner will receive one copy of Rolling Stone Germany's May 2024 issue with the world-exclusive 7" vinyl picture-sleeve reissue of "Dancing In The Dark" b/w the album-outtake "Pink Cadillac," as pictured above. Should any eligible entrant's name happen to be selected randomly more than once, another and different name will be selected randomly in their stead, in order to ensure that there will be a total of four separate winners, each of them winning one copy of the raffle prize.
Good luck to all entrants, and thanks again to our friends at Rolling Stone Germany! It's so cool and appropriate to be able to give away to some of our supportive readers another four copies of this special issue celebrating four decades of Born in the U.S.A.'s existence, during the same summer in which we're celebrating the first anniversary of our own website having been "born in the U.S.A.," as well.