That is what I did. While I was preparing the blog I was saving drafts and keeping them private. Then when I was ready to publish it I edited the time date stamp so it would show up in the recent posts column on the front page. I also changed the setting on the right hand side to public and then hit save.

I have used one of my other email addresses to notify myself just to check that the system worked and did not receive a notification.

As a test I made another blog and posted that immediately (i.e. without saving a draft), that time I did receive the notification okay and presumably my other subscribers did also.