Who Wants to Receive My HTML Email Newsletter?
May 23rd, 2012
I know unsolicited email annoys the hell out of a lot of people. Just like old-fashioned, snail mailed junk mail. But I’ve always figured the press of the delete button was so easy, it was the less offensive way to try to make potential clients, traditional publishers, aware of my book design and page comp/layout services.
So, since about 1998, every six months—more or less—I’ve sent out a cold email to every publisher I could find an email address for in the current year’s edition of Writer’s Market. Most of the time, I would attach my résumé and some samples of my work in a short, clean PDF. Whenever possible I directed this email to the director of production or some such title; by name if I could find one.
On the one hand, the overwhelming majority of recipients simply ignored it. One, single time someone, a man, at the University of Alaska Press, immediately emailed me back and harangued me about unsolicited email. I emailed back to apologize and received another answering email, this time from a woman, the production manager at the Press telling me not to worry about it, that the guy who’d raked me over the coals was a curmudgeon, not the one who hired freelancers, and, in fact, no longer worked there. So she was surprised I even got an email from the guy.
Never have received work from the University of Alaska Press, however.
But the tiny percentage of people who responded to express some interest in my services, most of them just to say they would keep my information on file should a need for a freelancer to do book design and/or layout work present itself, made my efforts worthwhile. In one instance, I worked for a small press for about three years, doing fair-paying layout work on seven or eight books of their own design. It took seven years before I heard from this particular press in any way whatsoever, but it paid off.
I’m left with thinking that for all the people who ignored me and the one person who may have (unofficially) been angry with me, the unsolicited email contact was not a bad thing to do. I do not believe I would have grown my book design practice to the point I have without such attempts at contact on my part.
Now I am planning an HTML email newsletter. Short, to be sure, but with pictures of a few of the books I’m most pleased to have worked on and with how they look and maybe just a bit of narrative about how my approach to making books has evolved. Again, however, I am concerned about sending unsolicited email.
So what is the protocol? Is it okay to send out one edition of an HTML newsletter unsolicited as long as I include a “send no more” option in the email? I mean, it is the 21st century, professional people should have wider bandwidth and larger mailboxes, no? We should all be sophisticated enough by now to just delete unwanted email and move on, no?
No?
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4 Comments Add your own
1. John Walker | May 28th, 2012 at 8:39 pm
Hi Stephen
Email shots are not really that good for getting work. I don’t think they’ve ever done it for me. Work seems to grow organically for me based on word of mouth and former clients moving on to other publishers.
That said as a freelancer not in day to day contact with people one can easily be forgotten so it is perhaps useful to remind people who do infact already know you!
I have also found some mileage in going to bookfairs. You get to meet people, you get a feel for what different publishers do and hey, you get time out! Personally I love Bologna. Lots of illustrators go to that one so the publishing staff that attend it are likely to be more design orientated rather than just marketing. Guess there is something like it in the US?
I’d like to do more to help self-publishering authors create decent looking books. How many emails would I need for that? Assuming I knew how to find them.
Anyway, good luck. Oddly encouraging to know your hit-rate was about the same as mine.
Best wishes
John
2. admin | May 28th, 2012 at 9:26 pm
Hullo, John! Thanks so much for reading … and for responding. If by “email shots” you only mean HTML newsletters, I obviously can’t speak to it. On the other hand, if you’re talking cold emails, I can say that almost all of the early growth of my book design practice came about in response to cold emails. As I’ve said many times before, twice yearly I would cold email about 600 or so publishers in the current edition of Writer’s Market. The response was, at best, 3-4%. And that doesn’t mean offers of work. But over time I did get some work and some word-of-mouth. The website, blog, and Twitter have brought me a lot more work in relation to the effort I put out. All my self-publishing clients have found me thru the latter avenues.
How long have you been freelancing, John? With “a net”? (That is, while holding a job for security?) I’ll check out your site next to see what kind of books you’ve done.
3. Richard | June 2nd, 2012 at 7:45 pm
Hi Stephen,
Some countries have laws which specifically prevent cold emailing (i.e. spamming) and an unsolicited newsletter could fall under such laws, although they’re not set in stone.
Probably the best way to ensure you’re not skating on thin ice is to have an opt-in link here on your site with a clear opt-out link at the bottom of the email. You could direct people to it through Twitter and elsewhere, meaning you would not be cold-emailing at all as people would give permission to receive the newsletter.
Another option is to send some samples out to people who may be interested in republishing what you write on their blogs or in magazines, etc. I receive a lot of press releases and newsletters from designers for inclusion on my storm from the east site, for example, always with the option to not receive any more.
Hope this helps a little,
Richard
4. admin | June 2nd, 2012 at 7:49 pm
Thanks for the info, Richard. I think I rather knew that. It’s one of the reasons–well, and inertia–that U haven’t done a thing towards putting such a newsletter together. I think I’ll just stick with networking and introducing yself as and where I can for now.
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