Email Confusion

I sent out a newsletter recently – something I need to do much more often – and was gratified to get a few responses.  However, what I found most frustrating was the pings I got back indicating that the email on my list wasn’t correct.

This frustration was a mixture of annoyance with the person who gave me an incorrect email address, and annoyance with myself for copying down wrong email addresses.  Yes, some people were jerks who either intentionally gave me a wrong email address so they wouldn’t hurt my feelings by turning me down when solicited(a coward’s act, and I only counted three), but most of my frustration was with myself – I’d copied down the address incorrectly(maybe it was .net when I wrote down .com, or I left an “e” out of the person’s name).  It indicated sloppiness on my part, and few things drive me crazier than when I make a simple error.

I eventually got it all sorted out and corrected my list, also sending out the email to those who I know didn’t get it the first time(I had to do this a few times since my pings came in not all at once, but rather spread out over the course of two days), but it just bothered me.  This is the business side of things, and I’d rather spend my time writing.

I suppose this is a warning, for lack of a better term, for everyone to check your lists as you’re writing them because you won’t be able to remember afterwards.  It also saves you from going back to the person via Facebook or something, hat in hand, and re-soliciting them.  Don’t gloss over the nuts and bolts of what you need to get people to buy the book you’ve pitched to them – it wastes time you can better spend elsewhere.