Today, after more than eight years and more than 4,000 posts, regular blogging on The Map Room comes to an end.

The blog will stay online and the archives will be accessible for as long as I have anything to say about it. But I won’t be looking for more material to blog about: no more scouring mailing lists, tweets and blogs; no more Google Alerts.

There will almost certainly an occasional post here in the future — I actually got a review copy of a book in the mail today — and if I have something to say on the subject of maps, I’ll say it here. So you might not want to unsubscribe from my RSS feed or my Twitter account just yet.

Why am I bringing things to an end? Eight years is a long time to spend on one thing and, truth be told, The Map Room has kept me from other projects, some of which have been on hold for this blog’s entire existence. Work on these projects will require me to disappear down the rabbit hole for weeks or even months at a time, which isn’t really compatible with regular blogging.

I also have to confess that this tough decision was made a little easier by the fact that ad revenues are down by more than half from their peak a few years ago. Fortunately, there are plenty of other excellent map blogs out there worth reading. It really is time to move on.

This is not to say that I’m abandoning maps altogether: in fact, two of those projects are map-related. I plan to do some research on the use of maps in fantasy literature. I also want to work on a beginner’s guide to OpenStreetMap, to encourage more people to contribute. I’ll let you know how those projects go. If you’d like to follow my progress on matters non-cartographical, join me on my personal website.

I’d be rude if I didn’t take this opportunity to thank everyone reading this — every visitor, every regular follower, every commenter, everyone who supported this site in financial and other ways.