About the paper
How Tangent Daily works
What it is
Tangent Daily is a morning paper for people who make and sell books, shirts, stickers, and printables. Each issue covers what people are searching for, the dates coming up in the next six weeks, what maker and parent communities are talking about, the day's color and art style, and six puzzles.
How an issue is made
The paper is compiled every morning from search, marketplace, news, and community signals. Automated systems collect the data, organize it, and write first drafts of the text. Katharyne Shelton reviews and edits every issue before it is published.
Search volumes are estimates from the sources named below.
Dig in
Every idea, niche, keyword, and story carries a Dig in button. It writes a report for makers on that subject, with a product idea, what to make, design notes, listing keywords with search numbers where the data has them, and when to list, and it takes follow-up questions about your own shop. The report is written by a language model at the moment you ask, from the same data the paper uses, and it is not reviewed before you read it.
Dig in has no per-report charge. Each plan comes with an allowance, listed below, and unused Dig ins do not carry over.
The plans
- Free. The whole daily paper, the six puzzles, and 3 Dig ins on your first day, then 1 a day.
- Subscriber, $12 a month. 200 Dig ins a month, the full Daily, follow-up chat, the whole Daily Bicker and reading list, the money and style reports, and business notes as PDFs.
- VIP, $18 a month. 1,000 Dig ins a month and everything in Subscriber. The monthly Tangent Daily book is coming.
The puzzles page has its own plan for extra puzzles and the archive. Join
Where the data comes from
- Google autocomplete
- The phrases Google suggests as people type show what shoppers are searching for today.
- Amazon autocomplete
- The phrases Amazon suggests in its search box show what buyers look for on the store.
- Keywords Everywhere
- It supplies the estimated monthly US searches and twelve months of history behind every keyword number.
- Wikipedia
- Daily pageview counts show which subjects people are reading about.
- Wikimedia Commons
- The public domain pictures on the picture wall come from its collections, with their licenses.
- Google News
- Headlines and story counts feed the news pages and the rising niches.
- Public posts from maker, seller, parent, and teacher communities feed Forums today and the Bicker.
- Hacker News
- Its front page supplies the technology stories makers are discussing.
- Lobsters
- Its hottest stories add to the technology picks in Forums today.
- Stack Exchange
- Questions from its sites appear in Stuck on it, credited to their authors under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- Ravelry
- Pattern names and counts from the knitting and crochet site fill the craft room.
- YouTube
- Upload counts and the week's most watched how-to videos fill Tutorials and the Dig in numbers.
- Product Hunt
- New software launches add to the technology picks in Forums today.
- Polymarket
- Prediction market questions and their current odds appear in The Odds.
- Kalshi
- More prediction market questions and odds appear in The Odds.
- Mumsnet
- Threads from the parenting forum feed The Daily Bicker.
- Bluesky
- Public posts add to the arguments in The Daily Bicker.
- Mastodon
- Public posts add to the arguments in The Daily Bicker.