I’ve had a few comments from people lately that I’m not very reliable in answering email…

I should probably explain my email philosophy, since I really don’t like to tick people off (:ahem: people pleaser :cough:).

First, I get about 200-300 actual emails a day (not spam, real emails I need to read or do something about). That’s just at home, not at work. Because I do, currently, have to deal with these emails basically at night, I’ve had to prioritize.

If an email is simply informational and I have no intention of doing something with it I’ll either flat out delete it (filing it away for future reference) or I’ll drop the author a “thanks” type of note.

If it requires me to do something about it, I skip to the next email. Generally that leaves me with 25-50 emails I actually have to do something with. Some are from clients I need to respond to. Others are from bloggers wanting to chat or get links and others are much, much more involved (like the 2 from my agent where he wants 2 book proposals for publishers).

Basically I do the quickest ones first, which generally leaves me with 5-10 emails per day that I simply have no time to deal with. Roughly speaking, this means I have a backlog of between 50-100 emails by the weekend.

I try and spend about half my day Saturday clearing this out, but I’m still left with (generally) 5-10 emails that I simply haven’t had the time to process.

These go into my “extreme backlog” category. There are currently about 30 emails sitting there. These range from people with business ideas that I want to look at in more detail to publishers to … Well, to a lot of things.

I need to get in the habit of letting these people know that I’ve “backburnered” them. I really do.

So, if you’ve written me an email and haven’t received a reply in 24 hours, you’ve likely been placed into the weekend queue. If you don’t receive a reply in a week or two, it’s because you’ve been put on the backburner and I’ve been too much of an inconsiderate ass to tell you.

OR:

I never received your email in the first place. Spam filters. Wonkiness of cyberspace. You’ve got the wrong address and it went into the nether world. Whatever.

In fact, I’ve heard from several people this week that other people I’d love to talk to have emailed me and I didn’t even know it.

This post is my apology, as well as me asking for patience. As long as I’m working a fulltime job, maintaining a popular blog, writing 30 articles a week, running a new blogging company it is going to happen that I miss emails (either through my own idiocy or because I didn’t receive it).

Please, please, please feel free to send me another asking if I received yours. I really don’t mind because it only takes me 5 seconds to respond letting you know where things are at and any initial thoughts I have.

I love to get email.

I love talking to people.

I love hearing about new stuff.

I simply don’t have enough time and energy in my day to give every email the time and thought it deserves.

So, sorry. I’ll do better in the future, I promise.