A Tale of Two Authors

As I was perusing Blogging in Black, I decided to visit a couple of the author’s websites. One author I found out lived in the Chicago area. So, I decided to send her an email to see if I could generate some correspondence, author to would-be author. The automated response said I could expect a real email shortly. And not less than two days later, Bettye Griffin responded to my email. We struck up a bit of a conversation and she told me she would be doing a book signing at a Borders near my house. I asked her if she’d mind if I came to sit and chat with her. She graciously agreed.

Two weeks later, I met Bettye Griffin at Borders. She was a very kind and gracious woman, who was genuinely excited to meet me. We chatted for about an hour, talking about her writing career (she writes AA romance and mainstream AA fiction) and mine and generally getting to know each other. We also talked about the state of the publishing industry. She’s had over 13 novels published and is working on a few more. Bettye was extremely encouraging, telling me that if my manuscript wasn’t good enough to be published, it definitely wouldn’t have been picked up by an agent. We shared information on upcoming conferences and events and agreed to keep in touch. She autographed one of her novels for me and we parted in good company. Since then we’ve traded emails and I’ve been on her blog several times. (Bettye is also very quick to respond to blog posts.) I will definitely keep in touch with her!

The second author (whom I will not name) is a frequent contributor to BIB. I visited her website and I was curious about her writing as she writes in my genre (Christian fiction). I asked some general questions about her writing, wanting to know more about her specific genre (urban Christian fiction), before I decided to purchase one of her books. SHE NEVER RESPONDED. At first, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, thinking that maybe she never got the email. But after I didn’t get one of those automated delivery failure notices, I’m pretty sure she got the email.

Now mind you, I know people are busy. But at some point, if someone sends you an email, the least you can do is respond. (It’s been well over a month now.) When you are an up-and-coming author, people who send you emails at your website are your best potential customers. It’s not good to alienate them.

Here’s what I learned from this experience:

1) I expected that a reasonably well-known author like Bettye would blow me off. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I will definitely spread the word about Bettye and purchase more of her work to support her.
2) I expected a relatively unknown author who wants to generate publicity about her books would be eager to cultivate a dialogue or at least respond to an email. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Will I support here efforts? Maybe not so much.
3) As I am continuing on this writing journey, I will endeavor to treat each person who inquires about my writing as if they are the most precious person on the planet. Or at least I will reply to their emails. Speaking of which, I owe someone an email response…

In Him,

Donna