E-Mail Can Ruin Your Life
When David Shipley, editor of the New York Times Op-Ed page, and Will Schwalbe, editor in chief of Hyperion Books, met in Grand Central Terminal in May of 2005, neither man would have guessed that their conversation that day would result in a 247-page book, “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home”.
“It’s hard to pinpoint the eureka moment,� said Shipley. “We realized that almost everything we were talking about came out of an e-mail—either really boneheaded e-mails we’d received, or stupid things that we’d done in an e-mail—and we just starting thinking: Is there anything out there that is remotely helpful in this regard?�
The answer was no. Over the next week or so, the two friends went back and forth and finally decided to get serious about plumbing the depths of e-mail, and creating a guide book to navigating what Mr. Schwalbe called the “wild west� of electronic communication. A month later, they had a “very generous� book deal with esteemed publisher Knopf.
Mr. Schwalbe said they wanted the book to be a fully functional e-mail reference guide, so they brought the magnifying glass in close: from the “To:� to the “From:�; from the “Reply� to the “Reply All�; from the “politics� of the “Cc:� to the “flattering� advantages of the “Bcc:� (that’s the blind copy). They unravel the mystery of what makes a good subject line and inform us of the dangers of Autofill.
They also asked broad questions—of themselves, mostly, but others too—like: How does e-mail differ from “e-mail alternatives� such as the phone, or the fax, or the letter?
Schwalbe added: “Everyone lives and dies on e-mail.�
Photo by Elena Seibert.
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