Why do you need two email addresses?

You’ve already got a personal email account with your internet service provider, or your webhosting company, or from Yahoo, AmericaOnLine, or Windows Live Mail. (previously known as Windows Outlook, previously known as Hotmail). Managing another email account sounds like twice the trouble. Relax. Your primary personal email account will remain the address where your personal mail should be delivered.

Have you ever forgotten your password? Has someone ever hacked your email account? Without a second email address you’re pretty much screwed. At least for the administrative purposes of your online accounts, personal and professional, we strongly recommend a second email account, specifically a gmail account.

Why Gmail?

Google mail offers a robust and secure email platform and serves best as an administrative account. Gmail is also how you sign-in to all of Google’s free products and services. There are many tools, including Google Analytics, that require you have a Google mail account. It can serve as the secondary address in case you forget your password, encounter problems with a server down, or your email account is hijacked.  If you have recently downloaded “First Steps as an Author Online,” you’ve already learned the advantages as an author to having a gmail address.

Three Email Addresses?

You need a third email address to use as a professional author. We recommend you create an email account linked to your website domain [name@yourauthorname.com]. To help you keep your personal email account separate from your work as a professional author, use name@yourauthorname.com. This also allows you to measure the email traffic directed from your author site. In your professional capacity, use this third email address to build your email list. As your publication date approaches, you want to collect these email contacts for pre-release publicity. Email remains the most effective social media marketing tool in converting ‘hits’ into sales.

So how do I keep track of 3 email accounts and not jump off an electronic cliff?

Google Mail is one place where you can route all your personal and professional email addresses into one place. And yes, you can reply to a personal email using your personal email address from inside the Google Mail dashboard. Or not. You can reply to a personal email from your name@author.com with a simply toggle bar over your return email address to elect which email address you plan to send the message. It’s also possible that your current email system allows you to route your gmail and name@author.com messages into a dashboard you already know and find comfortable. Some people prefer separate personal and professional email accounts on distinct platforms because it helps keep the lines clearer whereas others have a style that dissolves public and private lines on the same computer screen. You can set up separate email accounts at the same webmail address for different purposes, admin@yourname.com, webmaster@yourname.com, info@yourname.com, writersretreat@yourname.com, or bookings@yourname.com

Keep your email professional

Long gone are the days when paper copies of book manuscripts dropped over the transom of editors’ doors. Almost all business correspondence related to publishing books is now conducted online. In professional correspondence with editors, readers, agents, publicists, reviewers, journalists, bloggers, and others you engage with in the professional world of publishing, your email messages should conform to the old fashioned standards of a business letter. Properly addressed and an appropriate salutation? Is the body of the message organized into coherent paragraphs? Do you have an electronic signature line with your contact information and links to your website, blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and professional email address? If you’re using the email address ManicSuzy946@me.com or IKnowSquat@MyBookTitle.com you have less chance someone will even open your correspondence. And when they do open it, they expect to read a well-crafted document by a professional writer. Make sure you have spelled the name correctly and copyedited carefully.

One for personal. Two for administrative. Three for professional. Email accounts for managing your online presence as an author.