What I Learned From a Spammer
By James Batchelor on July 19th, 2022
I don’t get much spam email these days. With the increased efficiency of spam filters, and the fact that I serve up a spam email address to pretty much any system that asks for an email, not too much gets through. But I do get one. Every Tuesday, like clockwork, I receive an unsolicited email from a woman pushing health supplements. I do not know how she got my info, but here’s the weird part: when I go to delete her emails, I invariably find myself reading them. Why? Because they are short. She usually has about a paragraph of text that she divides up into discrete lines, like a bulleted list. Without even meaning to, I find myself scanning the text and often being drawn in.
So, what’s my point? My point is that I think you should buy some health supplements… Wait; that’s not right. My point is that I think her approach of short, frequent updates will work for me as well.
You already know that I am terrible about communicating with my readers, and for that, I really am sorry. I know firsthand how frustrating it can be to never know when you can expect the next book in a series. (Particularly when the jerk-author keeps ending every book on a cliffhanger!)
The challenge I have faced with posting regular updates, besides my natural reclusiveness, is that when I have time to write, I want to work on my books. And I flatter myself that’s what my readers want as well. But even when I do decide to post something, it never goes as planned. I sit down to dash off a quick post and emerge from a rabbit hole hours later with a 5,000-word convoluted mess that’s the verbal equivalent of the Winchester Mystery House.
That’s why I think a shorter format with posts of no more than a few hundred words would rein me in, require less time of both of us, and allow me to post updates more frequently without exposing you to my … er, let’s call it “genius”.
Now let’s see here, my previous post was seven months ago. As such, I am committing to you here and now, that within 7 months, I will post a real update! (Queue dramatic sting).