BookLocker Online Marketing

Wow, I just wandered into your stuff on blogs and ended up with the good article on press releases. I converted my cousin Stan’s release for Growing Up in a Foxhole from Arial/Richtext to plain text. It worked but the photo of the book cover vanished. Can I not include it in a text only document?

Nope, you cannot. Text-only means just that – text only.

The etiquette for online releases is to send only text, with a link to any supporting files. Many corporate email systems strip off attachments if they are coming from unknown parties. The reason for this is to curtail the transmission of any viruses. Also, there is nothing worst than getting an email with a huge attachment from someone you don’t know and having it clog up your system. It happens more frequently than you’d think.

In fact, my email client is set to not download messages that are larger than 40K.

Some other tips:

+ Many computer systems use different fonts to render the email message. If the font you choose has different characters than the recipient’s computer, the characters will not render correctly. The safe bet is to save the message as “text only” with your word processor. The text only option uses only ASCII characters, which are viewable by all computers. If you have any non-ASCII characters in your document, you’ll be able to see and correct them at that time.

+ Always do hard line breaks at then end of each line of the message. I usually do them at 60 characters. Otherwise, the recipient may:

get a
message with
sentences
that
looks like this

versus:

a message with sentences that looks like this.

+ Always make sure any URLs are on one line and less than 80 characters long. Most systems insert line breaks after 80 characters. If your URL goes over that, there is a good chance it will get split over two lines, thus breaking it. Example:

Correct —
http://www.booklocker.com/books/2187.html

Incorrect –
http://www.booklocker.com/bo
oks/2187.html

+ Always be sure to put the “http://” in front of the URL (http://www.booklocker.com/ versus www.booklocker.com). Most email readers use the “http://” as an indicator to know the series of letters is a web address and should make it clickable.