Old friends and customers

Back when I was selling a bunch of books every year, I probably received over 200 emails a day---most of them asking me for computer programming help or career advice.

I did my best to answer all of these, even if it was just something to say OK, I got it, I'll get back to you. If I ever failed to do that, it was usually because the answer to the question was too involved and I would save them for Sunday morning, or I just forgot.

I use Eudora for my email, and I found something like 10,000 emails in nearly 500 folders---I've managed to break them down into two major categories---Customers, and Others.

Some of these people are definitely customers of mine---I can verify they bought something directly from me via my website.

Others are people who say they bought or read one of my books, perhaps in a book store or a second hand store, something like that.

When I could identify a last name, I moved these emails into a subfolder with the last name letter---for instance, all the Smiths are in a folder called S.

Over the last few months I've been doing my best to make contact with everyone who's ever contacted me. Right now, I'm up to the B's in both the Customer and Other lists.

Many come back undeliverable---some are being answered, mostly nicely---and surprisingly, some people attribute my book to the reason they got a job, a promotion, something like that.

Once in a while, someone will say something like "I asked you this question 5 years ago, and you never answered me..."

Unlikely, but possible.

Another interesting thing...some of these people have really done a lot of good computer work since reading my Intro books, and I'd like to hire them to teach for me.

I don't think they believe me when I say so.