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Successful Email Management for Writers & Publishers
by Fern Reiss, CEO, PublishingGame.com/Expertizing.com
Lately, a lot of people have been asking me about
my email management techniques. With two businesses, several PR clients, dozens
of journalists, over 1000 emails a day, and no end in sight,
how do I get it all done? I’ll talk about time
management another time, but here’s how I manage
my email:
- Every morning, I immediately delete all the obvious
junk—everything from the Nigerian inquiries to
the Viagra ads.
- I whip through my lists (all of which come as digests)
to see if there’s anything I need to respond to. If
not, I delete.
- I then get back to all the journalists looking for
quotes, whether from me or from my PR clients. Journalists
are always under deadline pressure, so this is the one
part of your email onslaught that you shouldn’t
wait with.
- I file everything else into an email
folder. Here are my categories:
- Journalists (I break this folder down further into
hot (that’s for when Oprah calls), warm (those
are the journalists with whom I’m on friendly
terms) and cold (those with whom I don’t yet
have a relationship.) For many authors, just
a journalist folder will probably be sufficient.
- Action (Action means I need to do something about
it today, or at least this week.)
- Someday (Someday is if I need to do something about
it one of these days, but realistically it’s
not going to happen this week.)
- Waiting for. (This folder holds all the email
(which I CC to myself) when I’ve delegated a
responsibility to someone else such as my assistant;
or when I’ve written to someone for more information
and am waiting to hear from them (such as a bookstore
on whether or not they’re going to do a booksigning
for a client.)
- Client folders. (I have one folder for each
of my major clients. All email that pertains
to them—unless it’s an action I need to
take, something I’m waiting for, or relevant
to a journalist, is stored in their folder for easy
reference.)
- Book folders. (I keep one folder labeled for
each of my books, so that I can easily slide relevant
email in; when I’m ready to update the book,
I just go through the folder.)
- Organizations. (Likewise, I keep one folder
for each organization in which I’m active,
or on whose board I sit, so that I can easily track
those details.)
- Speaking. (I keep one folder for everything related
to upcoming speaking gigs—directions, details,
to-brings, my Amtrak Acela reservations, etc.)
Everyone once in a while I need to create
a temporary folder for something else—a new project, a
party big enough to need to track invitations and RSVPs,
a conference I’m planning-- but for the most part,
this system of folders keeps everything pretty organized.
I’m careful to always keep my inboxes
close to empty, and I schedule time each day to go through
my Action and Waiting For folders to make sure I’m
keeping up with all my responsibilities. (If I notice
the same undone item cropping up again and again in my
Action folder, sometimes I move it into my Someday folder—which
is a great guilt alleviator.)
Sounds simple, but I’m now accomplishing
more than double what I was getting done
before. I hope it works for some of you, too.
Fern Reiss is the author of The Publishing Game: Bestseller
in 30 Days (book marketing), The Publishing
Game: Find an Agent in 30 Days (finding a literary
agent), The
Publishing Game: Publish a Book in 30 Days (self-publishing).
For more information on Publishing Game books, workshops,
and consulting, and on getting your book and business
featured in the national media, sign up for the complimentary
PublishingGame/Expertizing email newsletter at http://www.PublishingGame.com/signup.htm.
Copyright © 2007 Fern Reiss
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