Modes of Communication

i find email most effective. things change much too quickly to rely on snail mail, simply because of the time it takes to travel, the effort in responding, and the time to travel back... not to mention if it gets bogged down in some back-and-forth.

and i would rather be beaten every hour on the hour with a truncheon than talk on the phone to anyone (okay, aside from the failings of my personality, the phone doesn't offer a paper trail to preserve details and agreements; that sounds more valid).

all that said, email is not without its perils, mainly being lost in the shuffle and being somewhat a bastard stepchild of letter-writing that rarely lives up to the effort of penning an actual letter.

but most of my deals are secured via email on freelance stuff.

popmuze said:

but these days I have no idea if any of my emails are even being received, let alone read.

Click to expand...

Yes, but the same goes for snail mail. Looking at photos of slush piles, a letter could get lost behind something.

I prefer email, if the editor accepts emails.

For me, it's been e-mail.

Any time I've done snail-mail, not only has it cost me a whole bundle of money (USPS needs to lower their rates!), but it's also taken up to a year and a half to hear anything from the publisher/magazine (I write short fiction, so most of the stuff I do does not require an agent).

Email has just been loads quicker, and so far, I haven't had any major problems with people not responding.

E-mail. A lot of editors and publishers don't appreciate being called unless they've asked you to. Snail mail is too complicated, like the others said. In-person is the best, if you can hack it, but first communication for me is almost always e-mail.

Email is my preference, too--for everything. That way I can look back and retrieve info from a nice, organized file system, instead of trying to find what paper towel I wrote on with crayon during a phone call.

Email here, too.