Professional Email Etiquette for Writers
by Mary Kole | Former literary agent, now a freelance editor, writing teacher, and IP/story developer for major publishers and creators.
As you are hoping to go from aspiring writer to published author, don’t forget professional email etiquette, especially since so many submissions are done via email or submission form these days. One of our Good Story Learning members wanted to know the do's and don'ts of email etiquette for writers. Here's the answer, plus a friendly reminder that there are no silly questions. The member wrote:
Should I create a separate email for writing-related exchanges? Should it be in my full name or something more like "writingstories@gmail.com"? And, are Gmail accounts the best for this purpose? What am I missing here if I want to send professional email submissions?
Professional Email Considerations
If you're okay dealing with a bit of tech, we highly recommend setting up a separate professional email account for your writing. Most of us have a few different emails that we use on a regular basis, each for a different purpose. (And if you have only one email address—consider me impressed!)
It’s important to remember that every step of your publishing journey is visible to others. Sure, you’re writing largely alone at first, but then you will share your work with loved ones, beta readers, critique groups, or even a freelance editor. Then, you might be contacting literary agents and publishers. (And one day, hopefully, readers!)
Show off your knowledge and savvy by taking the time to read industry blogs and educate yourself on professional email decorum when submitting. With this in mind, it is important to put our best foot forward and make a good impression when sending your query letter to literary agents and publishers. After all, these gatekeepers could be the ones that will ultimately determine our success in the writing world.
If your personal email address is something like "suzieluuvscats84@gmail.com", that's a bit too whimsical and personal to use in professional email communication. It may not be a dealbreaker, obviously, but it also might not be a good look. (Just to be clear, a love of cats is not a deal-breaker, but there are worse things you can put in your email, like profanity or explicit content.)
When selecting a professional email address, don't get too cutesy, precious, or too specific. Rather, choose something that reflects professionalism and is tasteful. Overly clever email addresses like “musingsfromthemuse@gmail” or “thebestwriterindaworld@gmail” can seem a bit overdone and garner an eyeroll from readers.
It's best to steer clear of basing your professional email address on the current project you're submitting query letters for (e.g. “endlessduskthenovella@gmail.com”). If your novel doesn't get picked up by an agent or a publisher, you'll either have to keep using the same email address for another project or you’ll establish precedent that requires you to create a separate one for each new venture, which can be quite inconvenient.
Moreover, the title of your book could change during the revision or publishing process—something which happens frequently. Make sure your professional email can work across multiple projects.
If you're looking for a professional yet classy email address for your writing, then you can't go wrong with either “janedoewriting@gmail” or “janedoenovels@gmail,” something that can be applicable to many projects and won't be overly excessive. It's likely your safest option.
Professional Email Etiquette
Remember to always stick to basic professional email etiquette when communicating with people in the publishing world, and if you choose to add a signature, make sure it's not overly outrageous with clashing visuals or weird fonts and colors.
If you’re a budding writer and you’ve yet to be published, rather than call yourself an “author,” use the term “writer.” And you can safely leave out any copyright information when sending off your query or sample, as you do not need to copyright material that you send to an agent. Finally, there’s no need for inspirational quotes, and, for goodness sake, never quote yourself or your own novel as a signature! This does not make a very professional email first impression.
Gmail is my go-to service for emailing—you simply can't go wrong. It is extremely user-friendly and yet packed with advanced features, such as labels, account importing, forwarding, auto-responses, and more.
Avoid making agents perform difficult tasks just to respond to your professional email—some email services (like Earthlink or others) may have an aggressive spam filter that makes a replying user verify they aren't spam before they can even send a reply. Doing this will only give your potential agents and publishers more work than they need to and is a professional email faux pas for writers.
If an agent is responding to hundreds of queries and it can be extremely frustrating having to prove my messages are genuine and not spam. Some agents and publishers don’t want to jump through the hoops. So if you're sending query letters to publishers, try and disable the spam filter or add all the agents to your safe contacts list for maximum professional email impact—it'll be greatly appreciated.
Otherwise, submit away and keep your focus on professional email etiquette. You might not be remembered for doing everything right (unfortunately), but you sure will stand out if you do it wrong.
(The emails in this article are fake, so if I nailed yours, I’m sorry.)
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