If you reply to an author’s newsletter, do you expect a response?
Interesting question!
If I had ever written to an author back in the days before email, I wouldn’t have expected an answer. Not that I ever wrote to an author, mind you. That would have meant …
- Finding the address
- Writing the letter
- Going to the post office so the letter could be weighed so I could make sure it had the correct postage for an international letter
- Assuming the letter got correctly delivered
- Assuming that the author read the letter
- Assuming that the author then chose to reply
- Assuming that the international postal service managed to get that reply back to me in New Zealand
That’s a lot of assumptions, and is probably why I wouldn’t have expected a reply.
Email and social media have made it easier and cheaper to connect. In theory, makes it easier to send and receive mail, but we are still beholden to the email service providers to deliver our email. Some email gets stuck in spam folders, and some never gets delivered at all.
Besides, email can be overwhelming.
I get work emails, life admin emails (like bank statements and bills), retail emails, author newsletter emails, and various other emails. I look at my email inbox and the emails I need to reply to, and fully understand why someone might choose not to respond.
Also, emails can turn into a never-ending train.
Author: Cool email
Reader: I enjoyed your cool email.
Author: Thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Reader: Thank you for saying thank you.
Author: Thank you for …
It could go on forever.
Someone has to stop the train, and I’m not going to object if that someone is the author.
So while it’s always nice to get a response, I don’t need one and I’m not going to hold it against an author if I don’t receive a response.
I was just thinking today about how I wrote to Gilbert Morris snail mail and was blown away when he replied. I wrote back which was the start of a few letters from him. Back then it was because one series had an impact and I just had to write. Never expected a reply.
Nowadays if I get an author newsletter and I respond to a newsletter due to the author asking for input or questions making it sound like they want to have some feedback then I would like a response. Like one author was asking for suggestions for a book about real life situations that had happened to readers. I never did get a reply after the second time I responded for similar reasons and never got a response at all I stopped responding.
When its more writing due to content. like one author talked about dealing with a issue I have or had dealt with. I just sent some encouragement and a few things I had done to help. I didn’t expect a reply because they hadn’t asked for answers.
So my take away is if you are asking for your subscribers to respond then I want a reply. if its just responding to something in the email without asking for responses I don’t expect it.