Mail Call

I used to look forward to mail delivery each day at the office. When I first started here in 1993, mail was delivered to my desk. Then they established boxes where we’d go and pick up our own mail.

Back in the day—before much email—mail time was fun. I’d get lots of interesting things each day:

• manuscripts on disk and hard copy from contracted authors that were ready to process into books.
• proposals fully printed out in interesting folders with attention-grabbing stationery and the like. Some presentations were gaudy and goofy, but it was part of the fun about the mail.
• notes, cards, postcards, and the like and sometimes even photographs from authors. More thank-you notes and vacation postcards were received before electronics made it easier to just to shoot off an instant message. More letters and comments from readers.
• marketing gifts and ploys to get us to work with certain service providers and the like (back before costs of gifts and postage skyrocketed).
• more magazines and newsletters put out by reading clubs, reviewers, and the like.

Now the mail is a drag and just adds to the clutter in my office. We still get readers’ notes and survey sheets, but not as many. We still get book proposals (though we have asked not to), but now 98% of them are not even going to be on target for what we do—let alone worth reviewing.

The most fun mail is still around the Christmas holidays. LOL I also look forward to the Romantic Times magazine and the CBD fiction catalog. That’s about it.

You would think that the paperwork clutter would go away with all the forms of electronic mail and storage that we have -- but it hasn't. Grrrrr

So, do you think we’ve really lost anything by going with electronic mail? Just curious.